New Books in History
Episodes
Adelina Stefan, "Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain" (Cornell UP, 2024)
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vacationing in Dictatorships: International Tourism in Socialist Romania and Franco's Spain (Cornell UP, 2024) examines the political effects of inte...
The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunning...
Shane Bobrycki, "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages" (Princeton UP, 2024)
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as S...
Erik Freas, "Palestine's Christians and the Nationalist Cause: The Late Ottoman and Mandatory Periods" (Routledge, 2024)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Palestine's Christians and the Nationalist Cause: The Late Ottoman and Mandatory Periods (Routledge, 2024) provides an historical overview of Palesti...
Raphael Chijioke Njoku, "Queen Elizabeth II and the Africans: Narrating Decolonization, Postwar Commonwealth, and Africa’s Development, 1947-2022" (Leuven UP, 2024)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The road to Queen Elizabeth II’s implementation of African reforms was rough, especially in the first two decades following her ascension to the thr...
Hunter Price, "Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty" (U Virginia Press, 2024)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary as...
Marcel Elias, "English Literature and the Crusades: Anxieties of Holy War, 1291-1453" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The period from the Mamlūk reconquest of Acre (1291) to the Ottoman siege of Constantinople (1453) witnessed the production of a substantial corpus o...
Jacqueline M. Burek, "Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century" (York Medieval Press, 2023)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore,...
Jessica A. Brockmole, "Pink Cars and Pocketbooks: How American Women Bought Their Way Into the Driver's Seat" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the commercial introduction of the automobile, US automakers have always sought women as customers and advertised accordingly. How, then, did ca...
Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
15 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive histo...
Xiangli Ding, "Hydropower Nation: Dams, Energy, and Political Changes in Twentieth-Century China" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
15 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a rising infrastructure powerhouse, China has the largest electricity generation capacity in the world today. Its number of large dams is second to...
Glen L. Thompson, "Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China" (Eerdmans, 2024)
15 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many people assume that the first introduction of Christianity to the Chinese was part of nineteenth-century Western imperialism. In fact, Syriac-spea...
Adam Pennington, "Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty" (Pen and Sword History, 2024)
15 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story of King Henry VIII, a man who married six times only to execute two of those wives, is part of Great Britain’s national and international ...
Erika Graham-Goering et al., "Lordship and the Decentralised State in Late Medieval Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jana Byars talks to Erika Graham-Goering of the University of Oslo about Lordship and the Decentralized State in Late Medieval Europe (Oxford Univer...
Peter Burke, "Ignorance: A Global History" (Yale UP, 2024)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout history, every age has thought of itself as more knowledgeable than the last. Renaissance humanists viewed the Middle Ages as an era of dar...
Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, "Mission Bengal: A Saffron Experiment" (HarperCollins India, 2020)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From being a fringe political party in 2013 to sweeping nearly half of the state s forty-two Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP has gained ground in Wes...
Pamela Allen Brown, "The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata" (Oxford UP, 2021)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pamela Allen Brown joins Jana Byars to talk about The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage (Oxford University Press, 2022), which traces the trans...
Saulius Suziedelis, "Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania is the first scholarly English-language study of Lithuania during World War II which utilizes previously ...
Ada Palmer, "Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ada Palmer joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Inventing the Renaissance (U Chicago Press, 2025) and the ways history is written and used....
Randall Fuller, "Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What...
Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially...
The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our book is: The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) by award-winning historian ...
Patricia Owens, "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (Princeton UP, 2025)
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The academic field of international relations presents its own history as largely a project of elite white men. And yet women played a prominent role ...
Philip Howell, "Pub" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In Pub (Bloomsbury, 2025) a new addition to the Object L...
Frank Gerits, "The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945-1966" (Cornell UP, 2023)
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Ideological Scramble for Africa, Frank Gerits examines how African leaders in the 1950s and 1960s crafted an anticolonial modernization projec...
William Sweet, "Before and After Democracy: Philosophy, Religion, and Politics" (Peeters, 2023)
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Recognized for his work on philosophy, religion and politics, Dr. Sweet talks at length about Before and After Democracy: Philosophy, Religion, and P...
Adam Laats, "Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. Pennsylvania and Massachusett...
Rebecca Davis Gibbons, "The Hegemon's Tool Kit: US Leadership and the Politics of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime" (Cornell UP, 2022)
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system ...
Tao Leigh Goffe, "Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis" (Doubleday Books, 2025)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of...
Magdalena Buchczyk, "Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, History and Ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum: Textiles, history and ethnography at the Museum of European Cultures, Berlin (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Magdalena...
Edward Simon, "The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History" (Cernunnos, 2024)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues (Abram...
Divya Kannan, "Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Contested Childhoods: Caste and Education in Colonial Kerala (Cambridge UP, 2024) traces a complex history of caste, race, education, and Christian m...
Canada and Eastern Europe, 1945–1991: Meeting in the Middle
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Andrea Chandler to talk about her new book with CEU Press, Canada and Eastern Europe,...
Peter J. Bowler, "Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Darwin's The Origin of Species to the twenty-first century, Peter Bowler reinterprets the long Darwinian Revolution by refocussing our attention ...
Michael Rembis, "Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum" (Oxford UP, 2025)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The asylum--at once a place of refuge, incarceration, and abuse--touched the lives of many Americans living between 1830 and 1950. What began as a few...
Bruce Robbins, "Atrocity: A Literary History" (Stanford UP, 2025)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, atrocity was not always seen as violating a moral norm or inviting indignation. Could the con...
Katie Beisel Hollenbach, "The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom" (Oxford UP, 2024)
09 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Katie Beisel Hollenbach reconsi...
Our History with AI is (much) Longer than You Think (with Kevin LaGrandeur)
08 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn Popcast, and when did we really start dreaming about the promise, and the danger, of artificial intelligence? When ChatGPT was relea...
Jeff Gomez, "There Was No Alternative: Generation X, AIDS, and the Making of a Classic Nineties Record" (McFarland, 2023)
08 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Grunge. Flannel. Generation X. In 1993, Seattle was the capital of the world, Nirvana was king, and slackers were everywhere. When the Red Hot organiz...
Martin D. Brown et al., "The Bondian Cold War: The Transnational Legacy of a Cultural Icon" (Routledge, 2024)
08 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
James Bond, Ian Fleming’s irrepressible and ubiquitous ‘spy,’ is often understood as a Cold Warrior, but James Bond’s Cold War diverged from t...
Eric Cline, "After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of Eric Cline's bestselling history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in rui...
William Gallois, "Qayrawan: The Amuletic City" (Penn State UP, 2024)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
William Gallois joins the podcast to discuss his latest book, Qayrawān: The Amuletic City, published by The Pennsylvania State University Press in 2...
Samantha Ege, "South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene by Samantha Ege (University of Illinois Press, 2014) is a collec...
Peter Whitewood, "The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military" (UP of Kansas, 2015)
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union's most talented and experienced army officers, includin...
Rosemary Wakeman, "The Worlds of Victor Sassoon: Bombay, London, Shanghai, 1918–1941" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 1920s and 1930s were a period of cosmopolitan globalization–and no one, perhaps, exemplified it more than Victor Sassoon, business tycoon, trade...
Jonathan Haslam, "Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War against Ukraine" (Harvard UP, 2025)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 should not have taken the world by surprise. The attack escalated a war that began in 2014 wi...
Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Our book is: Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra (UNC Press, 2025), by Ericka Verba, which explores the life of Chilean musician and artist...
Anthony E. Kaye, "Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History" (FSG, 2024)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which...
Lavanya Vemsani, "Handbook of Indian History" (Springer, 2024)
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Handbook of Indian History (Springer, 2024) comprehensively examines the extensive history of India by focusing on the unifying themes of history. Th...
Neil Fox, "Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Music Films: Documentaries, Concert Films and Other Cinematic Representations of Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2024), Dr. Neil Fox considers a broad...
Hal Brands, "The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World" (Norton, 2025)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of the modern era as the age of American power. In reality, we’re living in a long, violent Eurasian century. That giant, resource-ri...
Sophia Rosenfeld, "The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to ...
Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the We...
Sarah E. Bond, "Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire" (Yale UP, 2024)
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Sarah E. Bond retells the traditional story of Ancient Rome, revealing how groups of ancient workers unified, connected, and protested as th...
Ann Schmiesing, "The Brothers Grimm: A Biography" (Yale UP, 2024)
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ann Schmiesing, Ph.D. is Professor of German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, with research interests spanning 18th and...
Jean Strouse, "Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers" (FSG, 2024)
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At the height of his career, Sargent painted twelve portraits of the Wertheimer family, commissioned by Asher Wertheimer, a German-Jewish London art d...
Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024)
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead ...
Alexis Wolf, "Transnational Women Writers in the Wilmot Coterie, 1798-1840" (Boydell Press, 2024)
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What were two Irish sisters doing in Russia during the early years of the nineteenth century, editing the French-language memoirs of a princess who h...
Whitney Dirks, "Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Whitney Dirks joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England: Curiosity to See and Behold (...
Robert Dayton, "Cold Glitter: The Untold Story of Canadian Glam" (Feral House, 2024)
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cold Glitter: The Untold Story of Canadian Glam (Feral House, 2025) uncovers a forgotten yet fascinating chapter on glam rock music and culture...fro...
Sara Burdorff, "Maternity, Monstrosity, and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Burdorff joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Maternity, Monstrosity and Heroic (Im)mortality from Homer to Shakespeare (Amsterdam Univ...
Angela Wanhalla et al., "Te Hau Kainga: The Maori Home Front during the Second World War" (Auckland UP, 2024)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Taking readers to the farms and factories, the marae and churches where Māori lived, worked and raised their families, Te Hau Kāinga: The Māori Ho...
Yves Rees, "Travelling to Tomorrow: How Australia's Modern Women Pioneered Our Romance with the United States" (New South, 2024)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A celebrity decorator with blue hair. A single mother who advised JFK in the Oval Office. A Christian nudist with a passion for almond milk. As explor...
Moritz Mihatsch and Michael Mulligan, "Shifting Sovereignties: A Global History of a Concept in Practice" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shifting Sovereignties: A Global History of a Concept in Practice (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) explores practical manifestations of sovereignty fro...
Ewa Stańczyk, "Cartoons and Antisemitism: Visual Politics of Interwar Poland" (U Press of Mississippi, 2024)
01 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Antisemitic caricatures had existed in Polish society since at least the mid-nineteenth century. But never had the devastating impacts of this imagery...