Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast

Graham Denyer Willis, "Keep the Bones Alive: Missing People and the Search for Life in Brazil" (U California Press, 2022)

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every year at least 20,000 people go missing in São Paulo, Brazil. Many will be found, sometimes in mundane mass graves, but thousands will not. Kee...

Özge Yaka, "Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles" (U California Press, 2023)

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles (U California Press, 2023) portrays women's intimate, embodied relationsh...

Orisanmi Burton, "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press, 2023) boldly and compellingly arg...

Christopher John Bosso, "Why SNAP Works: A Political History--And Defense--of the Food Stamp Program" (U California Press, 2023)

14 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program evolve from a Depression-era effort to use up surplus goods into America's foundational food ass...

Hieyoon Kim, "Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea" (U California Press, 2023)

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Before South Korea became the democracy and media powerhouse that it is today, it underwent several decades of authoritarian rule during the Cold War ...

Timur Warner Hammond, "Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in Twentieth-Century Istanbul" (U California Press, 2023)

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, the Mosque of Eyüp Sultan has been one of Istanbul’s most important pilgrimage destinations, in large part because of the figure bur...

Damani Partridge, "Blackness As a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this bold and provocative new book, Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin (University...

Phaedra C. Pezzullo, "Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Addressing plastics can feel overwhelming. Guilt, shame, anger, hurt, fear, dismissiveness, and despair abound. Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution a...

C. J. Pascoe, "Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nice is not enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High (University of California Press, 2023) by Dr. C. J. Pascoe is a provocativ...

Daniel Jaffee, "Unbottled: The Fight Against Plastic Water and for Water Justice" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In just four decades, bottled water has transformed from a luxury niche item into a ubiquitous consumer product, representing a $300 billion market do...

William Darity et al., "The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Project: ...

Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag ...

Nicole Fabricant, "Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore" (U California Press, 2022)

10 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other c...

Bryan Pitts, "Until the Storm Passes: Politicians, Democracy, and the Demise of Brazil's Military Dictatorship" (U California Press, 2023)

03 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bryan Pitts' book Until the Storm Passes: Politicians, Democracy, and the Demise of Brazil's Military Dictatorship (U California Press, 2023) revea...

Diana W. Anselmo, "A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), Diana W. Anselmo queers the ea...

Jaime M. Pensado, "Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Love and Despair: How Catholic Activism Shaped Politics and the Counterculture in Modern Mexico (U California Press, 2023) explores the multiple and ...

Ari Finkelstein, "The Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch" (U California Press, 2018)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the generation after Constantine the Great elevated Christianity to a dominant position in the Roman Empire, his nephew, the Emperor Julian, sought...

Christina Heatherton, "Arise!: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalyzed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like B...

Lucia Carminati. "Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906" (U California Press, 2023)

24 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lucia Carminati's book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906 (U California Press, 2023...

Charlotte Brooks, "American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901–1949" (U California Press, 2019)

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1901 and World War II, up to half of all U.S.-born Chinese Americans relocated to China in search of better lives due to the discrimination th...

Charlotte Karem Albrecht, "Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian no...

Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon, "Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This field-defining collection establishes unfinished film projects--abandoned, interrupted, lost, or open-ended--as rich and under-appreciated resour...

Rob Eschmann,, "When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2023)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, on...

Juliet Schor, "After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back" (U California Press, 2021)

17 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work--giving earners flexibility, auton...

Phoebe Ho et al., "Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America" (U California Press, 2022)

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do children and adolescents transition to adulthood in today’s America? How have American society’s entrenching economic inequality and increa...

Lia Brozgal and Rebecca Glasberg, eds., "A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leïla Sebbar" (U California Press, 2023)

04 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leila Sebbar (U California Press, 2023) brings together the fasci...

James Zarsadiaz, "Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A." (U California Press, 2022)

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we discuss how myths of suburbia, the American West, and the American Dream informed regional planning, suburban design, and ideas ab...

David A. Banks, "The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America" (U California Press, 2023)

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America (U California Press, 2023) is the first book to explore how our cities gentrify b...

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, "The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life" (U California Press, 2023)

18 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (U of California Press, 2023), Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa examines rarely seen b...

Moon-Ho Jung, "Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State" (U California Press, 2022)

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As the American imperial project in the Pacific World grew at the end of the nineteenth century, so too did the American security and intelligence sta...

Reyhan Durmaz, "Stories Between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond" (U California Press, 2022)

27 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Stories between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond (University of California Press, 2022)...

James Zarsadiaz, "Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A." (U California Press, 2022)

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The myth of the frontier West found its home in America's late twentieth century suburbs, argues University of San Francisco associate professor James...

Christina Gerhardt, "Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean" (U California Press, 2023)

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an island see when the sea rises? Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean ...

Mark LeVine, "We'll Play Till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World" (U California Press, 2022)

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In We'll Play till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World (University of California Press, 2022), Mark LeVine,...

Divya Cherian, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia" (U California Press, 2023)

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023) explores the question of what it m...

Anne Marie Todd, "Valley of Heart's Delight: Environment and Sense of Place in the Santa Clara Valley" (U California Press, 2022)

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This agricultural history explores the transformation of the Santa Clara Valley over the past one hundred years from America's largest fruit-producing...

Christen T. Sasaki, "Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What if Hawai'i wasn't the 50th state? In Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i (U California Press, 2022), U...

Joel E. Correia, "Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay's Chaco" (U California Press, 2023)

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Paraguayan Chaco is a settler frontier where cattle ranching and agrarian extractivism drive some of the world's fastest deforestation and most ex...

Freddy Foks, "Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain" (U California Press, 2023)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Freddy Foks's Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (U California Press, 2023) is a n...

Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did British society become financialised? In Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2...

Tony K. Stewart, "Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination" (U California Press, 2019)

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and god...

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah...

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels be...

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs, "Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S Jacobs' book Moving the Needle: What Tight Labor Markets Do for the Poor (U California Press, 2023) is a timel...

E. Cram, "Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (U California Press, 2022) deepens the analysis of settler coloni...

Leigh Goodmark, "Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the st...

Daniel L. Hatcher, "Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems...

Aaron Rock-Singer, "In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East" (U California Press, 2022)

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who are the Salafis, and what are the roots of Salafism? What does it even mean to be Salafi? Why is Salafism concerned with ethics of visibility and ...

Eric Porter, "A People's History of SFO: The Making of the Bay Area and an Airport" (U California Press, 2023)

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What can an airport tell us about a city? Quite a bit, according to UC-Santa Cruz history professor Eric Porter in A People's History of SFO: The M...

Jessa Lingel, "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom" (U California Press, 2023)

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could h...

Alberto García, "Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Abandoning Their Beloved Land: The Politics of Bracero Migration in Mexico (U California Press, 2023) offers an essential new history of the Bracero ...

Timothy O. Benedict, "Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Timothy Benedict’s Spiritual Ends: Religion and the Heart of Dying in Japan (U California Press, 2023) is an exploration of spiritual care in the...

Arthur Kleinman, "Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine" (U California Press, 1997)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most influential and creative scholars in medical anthropology takes stock of his recent intellectual odysseys in this collection of essays...

Celeste Vaughan Curington et al., "The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance" (U California Press, 2021)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (U California Press, 2021) is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism,...

Damien M. Sojoyner, "Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This highly original story reflects on how the carceral state shapes daily life for young Black people--and how Black Americans resist, find joy, and ...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some...

Saida Grundy, "Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does it feel to be groomed as the "solution" to a national Black male "problem"? This is the guiding paradox of Respectable: Politics and Paradox...

Lara Gabrielle, "Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies" (U California Press, 2022)

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star...

Mitchell Schwarzer, "Hella Town: Oakland's History of Development and Disruption" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Oakland grew up on the shadow of the dynamo of the nineteenth century West, always the "other" city on San Francisco Bay.  But as Mitchell Schwarzer,...

Mark Juergensmeyer, "When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How does religious violence end? When God Stops Fighting: How Religious Violence Ends (U California Press, 2022) probes for answers through case st...

David Bond, "Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

So much of what we know of clean water, clean air, and now a stable climate rests on how fossil fuels first disrupted them. Negative Ecologies: Fossi...

Lisa Hajjar, "The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight Against Torture" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture (University of California Press, 2022) by Dr. Lisa Hajjar examines how hundreds of lawyers mo...

Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical...

Lisa Haushofer, "Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition" (U California Press, 2022)

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From Gail Borden’s meat biscuit to John Harvey Kellogg’s peptogenic foods for race betterment and Fleishmann’s yeast as both technology of empir...

Lee D. Baker, "From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954" (U California Press, 1998)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and ...

Yu Tokunaga, "Transborder Los Angeles: An Unknown Transpacific History of Japanese-Mexican Relations" (U California Press, 2022)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on Los Angeles farmland during the years between the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Japanese Internment in 1942, Transborder Los Angeles: A...

Lois Presser, "Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Harm takes shape in and through what is suppressed, left out, or taken for granted. Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (U California Press, 2022) is...

Namita Vijay Dharia, "The Industrial Ephemeral: Labor and Love in Indian Architecture and Construction" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What transformative effects does a multimillion-dollar industry have on those who work within it? The Industrial Ephemeral presents the untold stories...

Helen Anne Curry, "Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (U California Press, 2022), historian Helen Anne Curry investigates more th...

Patrick Bixby, "License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport" (U California Press, 2022)

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This surprising global history of an indispensable document reveals how the passport has shaped art, thought, and human experience while helping to de...

Josiah Ober, "The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled perform...

Munira Khayyat, "A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What worlds take root in war? In A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (U California Press, 2022), anthropologis...

Darra Goldstein, "The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food" (U California Press, 2022)

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food (U California Press, 2022) unearths the foods and flavors of the Russian land. Preeminent food s...

Yigal Bronner et al., "Sensitive Reading: The Pleasures of South Asian Literature in Translation" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What are the pleasures of reading translations of South Asian literature, and what does it take to enjoy a translated text? Sensitive Reading: The Pl...

Guthrie P. Ramsey, "Who Hears Here?: On Black Music, Pasts and Present" (U California Press, 2022)

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical intervention...

Sarah T. Hines, "Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia" (U California Press, 2021)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah T. Hines's Water for All Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia (University of California Press, 2021) chronicles how Bolivian...

Ross Cole, "The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination" (U California Press, 2021)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Folk: Music, Modernity, and the Political Imagination (U California Press, 2021), Ross Cole revisits the remarkable upswell of interest in f...

Dan Immergluck, "Red Hot City: Housing, Race, and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Atlanta" (U California Press, 2022)

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Atlanta, the capital of the American South, is at the red-hot core of expansion, inequality, and political relevance. In recent decades, central Atlan...

Ahmed White, "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, ...

Kwame Edwin Otu, "Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-Making in Neoliberal Ghana (University of California Press, 2022) is an ethnogr...

Thomas E. Burman et al., "The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650" (U California Press, 2022)

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (U California Press, 2022) presents an original and revisionist narrative of the developmen...

Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism" (U California Press, 2021)

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire have often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon o...

Patricia A. Turner, "Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2022)

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Barack Obama and his family have been the objects of rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories unprecedented in US politics. Outbreaks of anti-Obama lo...

Julie Sze, "Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger" (U California Press, 2020)

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political m...

Salim Tamari et al., "Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine" (U California Press, 2022)

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine (U California Press, 2022) is a critical exploration of Jerusalemite chronicler W...

Samhita Sunya, "Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay" (U California Press, 2022)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this inaugural episode, our host Aswin Punathambekar speaks with Samhita Sun...

NBN Classic: Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019)

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. Seven decades of military spen...

Raj Patel, "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things" (U California Press, 2017)

23 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to prod...

Catalina M. de Onís, "Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) provides an urgent and nuanced p...

Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in Amer...

Joshua Savala, "Beyond Patriotic Phobias: Connections, Cooperation, and Solidarity in the Peruvian-Chilean Pacific World" (U California Press, 2022)

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) looms large in the history of Peru and Chile. Upending the prevailing historiographical focus on the history of c...

Kenneth H. Kolb, "Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate" (U California Press, 2021)

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate (U California Press, 2021) examines the failure of recent efforts to improve Americans' diets by ...

Sara Ronis, "Demons in the Details: Demonic Discourse and Rabbinic Culture in Late Antique Babylonia" (U California Press, 2022)

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Babylonian Talmud is full of stories of demonic encounters, and it also includes many laws that attempt to regulate such encounters. In Demons in...

Peter S. Alagona, "The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States we...

Jerry C. Zee, "Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chinese Weather System" (U California Press, 2022)

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today Julia Keblinska and I had the pleasure of talking to Assistant Professor Jerry Zee about his book, Continent in Dust: Experiments in a Chine...

Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)

31 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast, Amy Edwards, author of Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2022), ...

Asad Q. Ahmed, "Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In his dense yet delightful new book Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia (University of California Pr...

Jarrod Hore, "Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism" (U California Press, 2022)

10 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the early years of photography, settlers around the Pacific World were fascinated with the landscapes of the places they conquered. According t...

Sarah Lamb, "Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the majority of the world's population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and...

Roberto J. González, "War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually: The Quest...