New Books in Intellectual History
Episodes
Diana Souhami, "No Modernism Without Lesbians" (Head of Zeus Book, 2020)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This ...
Oswyn Murray, "The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present" (Harvard UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The study of ancient Greece has been central to Western conceptions of history since the Renaissance. The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks ...
Lucy Delap, "Feminisms: A Global History" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today Jana Byars talks to Lucy Delap, Reader in Modern British and Gender History at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University, about her new book ...
David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around fo...
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "Medieval Meteorology: Forecasting the Weather from Aristotle to the Almanac" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we speak to Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor of History at the University of Reading about her new book Medieval Meteorology: Foreca...
Ḥannā Diyāb, "The Book of Travels" (NYU Press, 2022): A Conversation with Johannes Stephan
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Book of Travels Ḥannā Diyāb: A Conversation with Johannes StephanThe Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account o...
Chris Millington, "A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
31 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
FASCISM...FRANCE. Two words/ideas that scholars have spent much time and energy debating in relationship to one another. Chris Millington's A Histor...
Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)
30 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances dep...
Tom Arnold-Forster, "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography" (Princeton UP, 2025)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the years before World War I until the late 1960s, the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential writers ...
Ian Scoones, "Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World" (Polity, 2024)
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the fu...
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, "God: An Anatomy" (Knopf, 2022)
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words...
Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018)
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this...
Nick Spencer, "The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About?" (Oxford UP, 2025)
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between science and religion has long been a heated debate and is becoming an ever more popular topic. The scientific capacity to man...
Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of Everything" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle...
Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age" (Reaktion, 2025)
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age (Reaktion, 2025) is an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt and expressed themselves...
Vinay Lal, "Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times" (Oxford UP, 2025)
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The anthology presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished ...
Catherine Malabou, "Stop Thief!: Anarchism and Philosophy" (Polity Books, 2023)
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do so many philosophers value anarchy but refuse to call themselves anarchists? Why don’t philosophers draw on the classical anarchist tradition...
Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the developme...
Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re hearing an awful lot about the fraught relationship between science and media. In his book, News from M...
Rob Goodman, "Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) returns ...
Raphael Cormack, "Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult" (Norton, 2025)
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s. The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fak...
José Vergara, "All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature" (Cornell UP, 2021)
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and...
Nabil Yasien Mohamed, "Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty" (Routledge, 2024)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic in...
Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate" (Routledge, 2021)
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholes...
Thomas Kemple, “Intellectual Work and the Spirit of Capitalism: Weber’s Calling” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Kemple‘s new book is an extraordinarily thoughtful invitation to approach Max Weber (1864-1920) as a performer, and to experience Weber’s w...
Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Th...
Liz Fischer, "Network Analysis for Book Historians: Digital Labour and Data Visualization Techniques" (Arc Humanities Press, 2025)
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers and archivists have spent decades digitizing and cataloguing, but what does the future hold for book history? Network Analysis for Book H...
David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism" (Polity Press, 2023)
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” i...
Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things" (Oxford UP, 2024)
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the col...
Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015)
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by...
Federico Marcon, "Fascism: The History of a Word" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the ter...
Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025)
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his n...
Russell Shorto, “Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom” (Norton, 2017)
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Russell Shorto‘s Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom (Norton, 2017) is a history of many revolutions, kaleidoscopic turns through six indiv...
Neil Roberts, “A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass” (UP of Kentucky, 2018)
09 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2018 marks the 200th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ birth. It can hardly be said that scholars have neglected Douglass; indeed, he is o...
Margaret C. Jacob, "The Secular Enlightenment" (Princeton UP, 2019)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Secular Enlightenment by Professor Margaret C. Jacob, has been called a major new history on how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday l...
Maxim Samson, "Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World" (Profile Books, 2025)
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mountains, meridians, rivers, and borders--these are some of the features that divide the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far les...
Daniel José Gaztambide, "Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon's Couch" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sex...
Murad Idris, "War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term ...
William Marx, "Libraries of the Mind" (Princeton UP, 2025)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left ...
Alexander Douglas, "Against Identity: The Wisdom of Escaping the Self" (Random House, 2025)
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers – ancient Chinese philosopher ...
Chris Washington, "Nonbinary Jane Austen" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nonbinary Jane Austen, Chris Washington theorizes how Jane Austen envisions a nonbinary future that traverses the two-sex model of gender that...
Philip Cunliffe, "The National Interest: Politics After Globalization" (Polity Press, 2025)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urge...
Hanno Sauer, "The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality " (Oxford UP, 2024)
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this sweeping new history of humanity, told through the prism of our ever-changing moral norms and values, Hanno Sauer shows how modern society is ...
John Givens, "The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak" (Northern Illinois UP, 2018)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Image of Christ in Russian Literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Pasternak (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Dr. John Givens of ...
Martin Shuster, "Critical Theory: The Basics" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why does critical theory matter today? In Critical Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), Martin Shuster, a Professor of Philosophy and the Isaac...
Martin Shuster, "Critical Theory: The Basics" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why does critical theory matter today? In Critical Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), Martin Shuster, a Professor of Philosophy and the Isaac...
Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics ...
Jeremy DeWaal, "Geographies of Renewal: Heimat and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The term “Heimat,” referring to a local sense of home and belonging, has been the subject of much scholarly and popular debate following the fall ...
Christopher Ocker, "Luther, Conflict, and Christendom: Reformation Europe and Christianity in the West" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Luther - monk, priest, intellectual, or revolutionary - has been a controversial figure since the sixteenth century. Most studies of Luther str...
Aline Nardo, "Evolutionary Theory and Education" (Brill, 2025)
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has evolutionary theory shaped educational thinking over the past two centuries? ‘Evolutionary Theory and Education: The Influence of Evolution...
Book Talk 67 : The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is reliable knowledge? Listen to philosopher Michael Strevens, author of The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, to und...
Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018)
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenme...
Marion Bower, "The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality" (Routledge, 2018)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. She came to prominence in the world of psychoanalysis as Freud’...
Christopher T. Fleming, "Equity and Trusts in Sanskrit Jurisprudence" (British Academy, 2025)
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This monograph outlines the core principles of equity and trusts in Sanskrit jurisprudence (Dharmaśāstra) and traces their application in the practi...
Marc Herman, "After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integr...
Joseph Kellner, "The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse" (Cornell UP, 2025)
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Spirit of Socialism is a cultural history of the Soviet collapse. It examines the millions of Soviet people who, during the cascading crises of t...
How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learnin...
Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious chan...
Alexander Lian, "Stereoscopic Law: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Legal Education" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A unique and thorough work of intellectual history and legal scholarship Stereoscopic Law: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Legal Education (Cambridge Univ...
Samuel Kline Cohn, "Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Samuel K Cohn, Jr. joins Jana Byars to talk about Popular Protest and the Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford University Press, 2...
Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on kno...
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
05 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. Peop...
153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against antic...
Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth eds., "The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers" (Anthem Press, 2025)
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Anthem Companion to Karl Jaspers (Anthem Press, 2025) edited by Hans Joas and Matthias Bormuth is a collection of articles by an international ...
Yonatan Y. Brafman, "Critique of Halakhic Reason: Divine Commandments and Social Normativity" (Oxford UP, 2024)
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, Jewish thinkers have asked two parallel questions. First, what is the reasoning behind an individual commandment and second, why bother...
Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not ex...
Kevin J. Hayes, "Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin" (Oxford UP, 2025)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An exploration of the mind of one of America's most beloved Founding Fathers and most brilliant minds, through the books he read and his social circle...
Bernd Roeck, "The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance" (Princeton UP, 2025)
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Bernd Roeck about his book, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 2025)....
David Crystal, "Bookish Words and Their Surprising Stories" (Bodleian Library, 2025)
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Bookish Words & their Surprising Stories (Bodleian, 2025) by Dr. David Crystal, explore how books have played a pivotal role in the history of En...
Emmanuel Akyeampong, "Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders" (Indiana UP, 2023)
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Independent Africa: The First Generation of Nation Builders (Indiana UP, 2023)explores Africa's political economy in the first two full decades of in...
Frederick Reece, "Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon" (Oxford University Press, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We all know about art forgeries, but why write fake classical music? In Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon (Oxford U...
Mark Somos, Matthew Cleary, Pablo Dufour, Edward Jones Corredera, and Emanuele Salerno, "The Unseen History of International Law" (Oxford UP, 2025)
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Unseen History of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2025) locates and describes almost one thousand surviving copies of the first nine ...
Introducing The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Princeton University Press is thrilled to share news of a major new initiative: the publication of The Critical Edition of the Works of C. G. Jung. ...
Brook Ziporyn, "Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two a...
J. McKenzie Alexander, "The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves" (LSE Press, 2024)
14 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper g...
J. McKenzie Alexander, "The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves" (LSE Press, 2024)
14 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper g...
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, "Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective" (Columbia UP, 2025)
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the last third of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between totalizing doctrines—nationalist, Marxist, a...
Questions: A Discussion with Leslie Butler and Holly Case
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION: Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford Univers...
Brando Simeo Starkey, "Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System" (Doubleday, 2025)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) takes readers...
Christoph Schuringa, "Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philoso...
Jack Ashby, "Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums" (Penguin, 2025)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Nature's Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums (Penguin, 2025), zoologist Jack Ashby shares hidden stories behind th...
Catriona M.M. MacDonald, "The Caledoniad: The Making of Scottish History" (John Donald, 2024)
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the...
Derek J. Penslar, "Zionism: An Emotional State" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and ...
Yitzhak Conforti, "Zionism and Jewish Culture: A Study in the Origins of a National Movement" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What many people don’t realize is that Zionism is not a monolithic term. From its inception there were rigorous debates about the nature and directi...
Dan Sperrin, "State of Ridicule: A History of Satire in English Literature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Satire is a funny, aggressive, and largely oppositional literature which is typically created by people who refuse to participate in a given regime’...
Kirsten Macfarlane, "Lay Learning and the Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World" (Oxford UP, 2024)
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Early modernity has long been seen as a crucial period in the history of biblical scholarship, witnessing rapid advances in studies of Hebrew, Greek, ...
Anne C. Klein on Becoming a Buddha & Being Human too
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You’re human, but are you also a Buddha? If so, which one comes first? What does it mean to be human? What is a Buddha exactly? Is our humanity lost...
Book Talk 66: Political Hope, with Loren Goldman
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How to find hope in these times? I spoke with political scientist Loren Goldman about the principle of political hope: why we should have hope, how to...
Jennifer T. Roberts, "Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture" (Princeton UP, 2024)
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Covering the whole of the ancient Greek experience from its beginnings late in the third millennium BCE to the Roman conquest in 30 BCE, Out of One, ...
Yosie Levine, "Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate" (Littman Library, 2024)
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My recent interview with Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine about his book, Hakham Tsevi Ashkenazi and the Battlegrounds of the Early Modern Rabbinate (Li...
Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the o...
David Kraemer, "Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora" (Oxford UP, 2025)
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2025) analyzes biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, studie...
Quentin Skinner, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does liberty entail? How have concepts of liberty changed over time? And what are the global consequences? Liberty as Independence: The Making a...
Richard Calis, "The Discovery of Ottoman Greece: Knowledge, Encounter, and Belief in the Mediterranean World of Martin Crusius" (Harvard UP, 2025)
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the late sixteenth century, a German Lutheran scholar named Martin Crusius compiled an exceptionally rich record of Greek life under Ottoman rule. ...
Rasheedah Phillips, "Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time" (AK Press, 2025)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some processes—like aging, birth, and car crashes—occur in only one direction in time, when by the fundamental symmetry of the universe, we...
Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that peopl...
Marc Shapiro, "Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New: The Unique Vision of Rav Kook" (Littman Library, 2025)
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rav Kook’s Vision: Halakhah, Secular Knowledge, and the Renewal of Judaism. Those of us who know something about Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook’...
Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...
Daniel Behar, "Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity (Edinburgh UP, 2025) examines a poetic movement that rose from under official state discourse in 1970s Syria ...
Globalization's Backlash: Echoes of the Interwar Era in Today’s World
10 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey interviews historian Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass ...