New Books in Intellectual History

Nancy M. Rourke, "Ecological Moral Character: A Catholic Model" (Georgetown UP, 2024)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The images we use to think about moral character are powerful. They inform our understanding of the moral virtues and the ways in which moral characte...

Aaron Robertson, "The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America" (FSG, 2024)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in ...

Paul Chrystal, "Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome" (Reaktion, 2025)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Both humorous and shocking, Miracula: Weird and Wonderful Stories of Ancient Greece and Rome (Reaktion, 2025) by Paul Crystal is filled with astonis...

Matthew Daniel Eddy, "Media and the Mind: Art, Science, and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We often think of reason as a fixed entity, as a definitive body of facts that do not change over time. But during the Enlightenment, reason also was ...

Timothy Twining, "The Limits of Erudition: The Old Testament in Post-Reformation Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The history of early modern biblical scholarship has often been told as a teleological narrative in which a succession of radical thinkers dethroned t...

Judith Vitale, "The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan" (Harvard UP, 2024)

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although Japan was never conquered by the Mongol empire, the 1274 and 1281 Mongol invasions were commemorated, remembered, and imagined in Japanese hi...

Tithi Bhattacharya, "Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal" (Duke UP, 2024)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal (Duke UP, 2024), Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali gho...

Donald S. Prudlo, "Stimulus Pastorum: A Charge to Pastors" (St. Augustine's Press, 2022)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The work of St. Bartholomew of Braga, O.P. (1514-1590) appears here in English for the first time despite its long and enduring influence in ecclesias...

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?...

Laura Spinney, "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Star. Stjarna. Setareh. Thousands of miles apart, humans look up at the night sky and use the same word to describe what they see. Listen to these Eng...

Jeff Sebo, "The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why" (Norton, 2025)

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast num...

Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this pos...

Mehrdad Alipour, "Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse" (Brill, 2024)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does Islam, particularly Shīʿī Islam, really say about same-sex sexual relations? Can Islamic legal frameworks, rooted in centuries of jurispr...

Franck Billé, "Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity" (Duke UP, 2025)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity (Duke UP, 2025), Franck Billé examines the conceptual link between the nation-state ...

Udi Greenberg, "The End of the Schism: Catholics, Protestants, and the Remaking of Christian Life in Europe, 1880s-1970s" (Harvard UP, 2025)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reconciliation between Europe's Protestants and Catholics led to a new era of Christian collaboration.  Why did these erstwhile foes end their schis...

Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Harding’s The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millenni...

Geoffrey Roberts, "Stalin's Library: A Dictator and His Books" (Yale UP, 2022)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he rea...

Fernanda Gallo, "Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist Fernanda Gallo (Homerton College, University of Cambridge) has a fascinating new book, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Pr...

Shushma Malik, "The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Nero-Antichrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm (Cambridge UP, 2020), Shushma Malik reconstructs the means by which the emperor Nero cam...

Margherita Zanasi, "Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Margherita Zanasi argues that basic...

Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression?...

Samuel Ross, "Qur’an Commentary and the Biblical Turn: A History of Muslim Exegetical Engagement with the Biblical Text" (de Gruyter, 2024)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Quran Commentary and the Biblical Turn (de Gruyter, 2024) examines the exegetical relationship between the Quran and the Bible in Islamic intellectu...

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'd...

Henry Jenkins, "Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America" (NYU Press, 2025)

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginning...

David Wiles, "Democracy, Theatre and Performance: From the Greeks to Gandhi" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Democracy, argues David Wiles, is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments o...

Stephen J. Campbell, "Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life" (Princeton UP, 2025)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) never signed a painting, and none of his supposed self-portraits can be securely ascribed to his hand. He revealed nex...

Richard Alfred Muller, "Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology" (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Predestination in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Reformation Heritage Books, 2024), Dr. Richard A. Muller delves into one of the most controvers...

Matthew D'Auria et al., "The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The origins and nature of nationhood and nationalism continue to be topics of heated scholarly debate. This major new reference work with contribution...

Benjamin M. Studebaker, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberal democracies don’t age gracefully. Established systems of governance like those of the UK and the US which once served as blueprints are toda...

Bruno Leipold, "Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2024)

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought (Princeton UP, 2024), Bruno Leipold argues that, cont...

Eli Rubin, "Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford University Press, 2025), Eli Rubin provides a comprehe...

Katherine Hallemeier, "African Literature and US Empire: Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

African Literature and US Empire Postcolonial Optimism in Nigerian and South African Writing (Edinburgh UP, 2024) demonstrates how African literatur...

Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of t...

Julia Jarcho, "Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Julia Jarcho proposes that the desire to write is inextricably bou...

Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (Uni...

Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the centra...

Letizia Osti, "History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2024)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Abu Bakr al-Suli was an Abbasid polymath and table companion, as well as a legendary chess player. He was perhaps best known for his work on poetry an...

Sarah Bassett, "Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual product...

Hannan Hever, "Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism: Chapters in Literary Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

30 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hasidism, Haskalah, Zionism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) reveals how political and literary dialogues and conflicts between the Hebrew literature of...

Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterl...

William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopol...

William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Beautiful: Plato the Teacher and the Pre-Republic Dialogues from Protagoras to Symposium" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With Ascent to the Beautiful, William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. This book...

Joshua Ehrlich, "The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Global Corporations Special Series on the Law Channel on the New Books Network. This Special Series is dedicated to interviews with s...

Peter Sloterdijk Knows it All

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest is Dr Thomas Sutherland, author of the Bloomsbury title, Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason ...

Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U California Press, 2025)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University o...

Andrew Clapham, "War" (Oxford UP, 2021)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book poses the question: How relevant is the concept of war today? Professor Andrew Clapham of the Graduate Institute of International and Develo...

David D. Grafton, "Muhammad in the Seminary: Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century" (NYU Press, 2024)

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curr...

Mick Brown, "The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West" (Oxford UP, 2023)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mick Brown’s The Nirvana Express: How the Search for Enlightenment Went West (Oxford UP, 2023) is a riveting account about the West's engagement w...

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts, "Creolizing Hannah Arendt" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marilyn Nissim-Sabat and Neil Roberts have edited a new collection of essays, Creolizing Hannah Arendt. This edited volume dives into Hannah Arendt’...

Simon Rabinovitch, "Sovereignty and Religious Freedom: A Jewish History" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is a common assumption that in Israel, Jews have sovereignty, and in most other places where Jews live today, they have religious freedom instead. ...

Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy ...

Chance E. Bonar, "The Author in Early Christian Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While scholars of ancient Mediterranean literature have focused their efforts heavily on explaining why authors would write pseudonymously or anonymou...

Kobi Kabalek, "Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025)

16 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism (U Wisconsin Press, 2025), Kobi Kabalek examines how the rescue of Jews duri...

Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against...

Ken Frieden, "Travels in Translation: Sea Tales at the Source of Jewish Fiction" (Syracuse UP, 2016)

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries before its "rebirth" as a spoken language, Hebrew writing was like a magical ship in a bottle that gradually changed design but never vo...

Gregory Soderberg, "John Brown of Haddington on Frequent Communion" (Wipf & Stock, 2024)

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shallow and quickly outdated Christian worship practices have left many searching for something with deeper roots. Many churches have rediscovered the...

Emma Borg and Sarah A. Fisher, "Meaning: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our ability to find meaning in things is one of the most important aspects of human life. But it is also one of the most mysterious. Where does meanin...

Anthony Grafton, "Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa" (Harvard UP, 2023)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Harvard UP, 2023) is a revelatory new account of the magus―the learned magician―and his place i...

Ethan Kleinberg, "Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought" (Stanford UP, 2021)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this rich intellectual history of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic lectures in Paris, Ethan Kleinberg addresses Levinas's ...

Jeffrey A. Lenowitz, "Constitutional Ratification Without Reason" (Oxford UP, 2022)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Constitutional Ratification Without Reason (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on constitutional ratification, the procedure in which a draft constitution is ...

David N. Livingstone, "The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet an...

Erik Baker, "Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America" (Harvard UP, 2025)

02 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century. Thrift and persistence came to seem old-fashioned. Success...

Ellen Fenzel Arnold, "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, C. 300-1100" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jana Byars talks to Ellen Arnold about Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, 300 - 1100 (Cambridge UP, 2024). Fishermen...

Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of...

Christina Kiaer, "Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Realism" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dislodging the avant-garde from its central position in the narrative of Soviet art, Collective Body: Aleksandr Deineka at the Limit of Socialist Rea...

Gregory Castle et al., "The Irish Bildungsroman" (Syracuse UP, 2025)

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The classical Bildungsroman charted an idealized path of human development—the harmonization of individual desires with societal norms in the format...

Religious Freedom: A Conversation on the Conservative Tradition with John D. Wilsey

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this conversation, we sit down with John D. Wilsey, Professor of Church History and Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Sen...

Rhiannon Stephens, "Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History" (Duke UP, 2022)

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Poverty and Wealth in East Africa: A Conceptual History (Duke UP, 2022), Rhiannon Stephens offers a conceptual history of how people living in ea...

Amit Levy, "A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel" (Brandeis UP, 2024)

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel (Brandeis UP, 2024) explores the fascinating history of Zionist and Israeli...

William M. Paris, "Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation" (Oxford UP, 2024)

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does time figure in racial domination? What is the relationship between the capitalist organization of time and racial domination? Could utopian t...

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale UP, 2024)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two ocea...

Peter Wien, "Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East" (Routledge, 2017)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Arab nationalism has been one of the dominant ideologies in the Middle East and North Africa since the early twentieth century. However, a clear defin...

Kathryn Taylor, "Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice" (U Delaware Press, 2023)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ordering Customs: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice (University of Delaware Press, 2023) explores how Renaissance Venetians sought to make ...

Melinda Cooper, "Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance" (Zone Books, 2024)

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over s...

Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

British poet John Milton published one of the earliest and still tremendously important defenses of free speech for our modern world. From his famous ...

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,...

Trevor Wilson, "Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Trevor Wilson about his new book, Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy (Northwestern Unive...

Marie-France Fortin, "The King Can Do No Wrong: Constitutional Fundamentals, Common Law History, and Crown Liability" (Oxford UP, 2024)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

'The king can do no wrong' remains one of the most fundamental yet misunderstood tenets of the common law tradition. Confusion over the phrase's histo...

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...

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...

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 ...

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....

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...

Iain D. Thomson, "Rethinking Death in and after Heidegger" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are coming up on the centenary of Heidegger’s Being and Time, a text that radically reshaped the intellectual landscape. One of its most central...

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...

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...

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...

Josef Stern, "Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed" in Translation: A History from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth" (U Chicago Press, 2019)

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is a common misconception that the Jewish religion does not believe in an afterlife. While it’s true that Judaism is focused on actions, inten...

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 ...

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...

Richard Rorty, "What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics" (Princeton UP, 2023)

08 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Chris Voparil about What Can We Hope For?: Essays on Politics (Princeton UP, 2023), a book of Richard Rorty's writings he co-edit...

Zahi Zalloua, "The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment (Bloomsbury 2024) argues for ressentiment's generative negativity, prompting a shift fro...

Davide Panagia, "Sentimental Empiricism: Politics, Philosophy, and Criticism in Postwar France" (Fordham UP, 2024)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist Davide Panagia (UCLA) has two new books out focusing on the broader themes and ideas of film, aesthetics, and political theory. Se...

We Are Free to Change the World: A Conversation on Hannah Arendt with Lyndsay Stonebridge

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Madison’s Notes, we sit down with Lindsay Stonebridge, author of We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in ...

Vittorio Bufacchi, "Why Cicero Matters" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why Cicero Matters (Bloomsbury, 2023) shows us how the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius, better known as Cicero, can help realize a ne...

Ayesha Jalal, "Muslim Enlightened Thought in South Asia" (Routledge, 2025)

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Ayesha Jalal’s latest work Muslim Enlightened Thought in South Asia (Routledge, 2024) readers are introduced to the “roshan khayali” (enlig...

Cyrus Ali Zargar, "The Ethics of Karbala: Myths, Modernity, and Virtues of Nobility" (Routledge, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Ethics of Karbala: Myths, Modernity, and Virtues of Nobility (Routledge, 2024) investigates the relationship between sacred narratives and the de...

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...

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...