New Books in Intellectual History
Episodes
J. C. D. Clark, "The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents...
Jack A. Goldstone, "Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2023)
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their pursuit of social justice, revolutionaries have taken on the assembled might of monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. They have often, thou...
David L. Swartz, "The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity" (Routledge, 2024)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Remember the bleach drinking episode? Remember ‘alternative facts’? Remember ‘I have the best words’? These elements of the Trump presidency s...
Alessandra Russo, "A New Antiquity: Art and Humanity as Universal, 1400-1600" (Penn State UP, 2024)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to think of sixteenth-century European artistic theory as separate from the artworks displayed in the non-European sections of museums. In A ...
William H. F. Altman, "Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic" (Lexington, 2012)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lexington, 2012), William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato,...
Rafal K. Stepien, "Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy: Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness" (Oxford UP, 2024)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nāgārjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers asid...
Jason A. Josephson Storm, "The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Jose...
Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, "The Spectre of State Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial cri...
Gergely Gosztonyi, "Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media’s Content Regulation and Moderation Practices" (Springer, 2023)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering...
Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a ...
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans ...
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, a...
Tom Navon, "Radical Assimilation in the Face of the Holocaust: Otto Heller (1897–1945)" (SUNY Press, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This book explores the confrontation of radically assimilated Jews with the violent collapse of their envisioned integration into a cosmopolitan Europ...
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-ce...
Zrinka Stahuljak, "Fixers: Agency, Translation, and the Early Global History of Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Fixers: Agency, Translation, and the Early Global History of Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Dr. Zrinka Stahuljak challenges scho...
William H. F. Altman, "The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism" (Lexington Books, 2010)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish emigrant to the United States, an author, professor and political philosopher. Born in 1899 in Kirchhain in the Kingdo...
Karl Marx, "Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Th...
Kevin J. McMahon, "A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many scholars and members of the press have argued that John Roberts’ Supreme Court is exceptional. While some emphasize the approach to interpretin...
Michael D. Hattem, "The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History" (Yale UP, 2024)
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred a...
Theodore Papakostas, "How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator" (William Collins, 2024)
14 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn’t. A simple question, ‘What do you do?’, becomes the springboar...
Lynn M. Tesser, "Rethinking the End of Empire: Nationalism, State Formation, and Great Power Politics" (Stanford UP, 2024)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why did a nation-state order emerge when nationalist activism was usually an elitist pursuit in the age of empire? Ordinary inhabitants and even most ...
Whitney Barlow Robles, "Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History" (Yale UP, 2023)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dive into the world of animals with Whitney Barlow Robles in her captivating new book, Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History (Yale UP, 2...
Isaac Nakhimovsky, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton UP, 2024)
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Prin...
Geoffrey D. Claussen, "Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought" (Jewish Publication Society, 2022)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Geoffrey D. Claussen about Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought (Jewish Publication Society, 2022). How do modern J...
Morgane Cadieu, "On Both Sides of the Tracks: Social Mobility in Contemporary French Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An analysis of social mobility in contemporary French literature that offers a new perspective on figures who move between social classes. Social clim...
Anthony Michael Kreis, "Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development" (U California Press, 2024)
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the great divides in American judicial scholarship is between legal scholars who take the justices at their word and assume that those words de...
Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the...
Ana Stevenson, "The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Ana Stevenson explores the ubiquity of what she term...
Sara E. Johnson, "Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2023)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Sain...
Magdalena J. Zaborowska, "Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France" (Duke UP, 2018)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwi...
Beri Marusic on Grief and other Expiring Emotions (Katie Elliott, JP)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why is that when a loved one dies, grief seems inescapable--and then diminishes? The brilliant Edinburgh philosopher Berislav Marusic's "Do Reasons E...
E. J. Fagan, "The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics" (Oxford UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist E.J. Fagan, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, once worked at a think tank, and...
S4E4 In Defense of Bad Science and the Philosophy of Being
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role does science play in shaping our laws? How do we distinguish between good science and bad science? Where does science hit its limits due to ...
Julia Kindt, "The Trojan Horse and Other Stories: Ten Ancient Creatures That Make Us Human" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What makes us human? What, if anything, sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the answer to these q...
Jonathan Gienapp, "Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique" (Yale UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The legal theory of constitutional originalism has attracted increasing attention in recent years as the US Supreme Court has tilted with the weigh...
David Lay Williams, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" (Princeton UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist David Lay Williams has a new book that traces the problem of economic inequality through the thought of many of the canonical think...
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many historical figures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no excep...
Andrea Moudarres, "The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso" (U Virginia Press, 2019)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso (University of Delaware Press, 2019), Andrea Moudarres examines i...
Violet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Y...
Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its D...
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and pra...
Lise Butler, "Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970" (Oxford UP, 2020)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lise Butler’s Michael Young, Social Science and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford UP, 2020) invites us to revisit a figure who, in Butler’s wor...
Ronnie Grinberg, "Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals" (Princeton UP, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly m...
Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded a...
Mark Valeri, "The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chi...
Ludovico Silva, "Marx's Literary Style" (Verso, 2023)
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from ...
Nazmul Sultan, "Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought" (Harvard UP, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peop...
Sumana Roy, "Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries" (Yale UP, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who is a provincial? In Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries (Yale UP, 2024), Sumana Roy assembles a striking cast of writers, artists, filmm...
Joachim C. Häberlen, "Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe" (Penguin, 2023)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In post-war Europe, protest was everywhere. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, from Paris to Prague, Milan to Wroclaw, ordinary people took to the str...
Lost in Ideology: A Conversation with Jason Blakely
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his...
Rama Sundari Mantena, "Provincial Democracy: Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-century South India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Provincial Democracy: Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-century South India (Cambridge UP, 2023) delves into the period between...
Devonya N. Havis, "Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy" (Lexington Books, 2022)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What can philosophy do? By taking up Black American cultural practices, Devonya N. Havis suggests that academic philosophy has been too narrow in its...
Maria Dimova-Cookson, "Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty" (Routledge, 2019)
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Dimova-Cookson's new book Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty (Routledge, 2019) offers an analysis of the distinction between positive and ...
Ahreum Kim, "The Countercultural Victory of 1 John in Greco-Roman Context: Conquering the World" (T&T Clark, 2023)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Countercultural Victory of 1 John in Greco-Roman Context: Conquering the World (T&T Clark, 2023), Ahreum Kim re-examines conquering language...
Stuart Elden, "The Birth of Territory" (U Chicago Press, 2013)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled p...
Maria Taroutina and Allison Leigh, "Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940" (Manchester UP, 2023)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940 (Manchester UP, 2023) features new research on Russia's ...
Sudhir Kakar, "The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations" (Karnac, 2024)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Ashis Roy (Psychoanalyst (IPA) and author of the recently published book Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Mus...
Lesley Smith, "Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lesley Smith of Oxford University joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life (Univ...
Lauren Benton, "They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires. Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slav...
Decoloniality
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is the third one this series where we look back over the first principles of the ReOrient project. In previous episodes we have discussed...
Shaul Magid, "Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane ...
Noah Heringman, "Deep Time: A Literary History" (Princeton UP, 2023)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “...
James Madison and the Spirit of Self-Government: A Conversation with Colleen Sheehan
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who was James Madison? Why were his Notes on Government so valuable to the American founding? Did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Wash...
Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultura...
Peter Charles Hoffer, "The Supreme Court Footnote: A Surprising History" (NYU Press, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the draft majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health was leaked, the media, public officials, and scholars focused on the overturning...
Sara J. Charles, "The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion, 2024) by Sara J. Charles takes the reader on an immersive journey through mediae...
Marissa Nicosia, "Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660" (Oxford UP, 2023)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2023) argues that dramatic narratives about mon...
Marc Redfield, "Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan" (Fordham UP, 2020)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Marc Redfield, professor of Comparative Literature, English, and German Studies at Brown University about his most recen...
Cordelia Heß, "The Medieval Archive of Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden" (de Gruyter, 2021)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. Cor...
Gavin Steingo, "Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity (U Chicago Press, 2024), music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of at...
Daniel Kahneman’s Forgotten Legacy: Investigating Exxon-Funded Psychological Research
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against ...
Dora Osborne, "What Remains: The Post-Holocaust Archive in German Memory Culture" (Camden House, 2020)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With the passing of those who witnessed National Socialism and the Holocaust, the archive matters as never before. However, the material that remains ...
Jacob Soll, "Free Market: The History of an Idea" (Basic Books, 2022)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After two government bailouts of the American economy in less than twenty years, free market thought is due for serious reappraisal. Free Market: The...
Samuel Ely Bagg, "The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year, many countries around the world, including most of the world's most populous democracies, have consequential nation-wide elections. In many...
Edward Shanks, "The People of the Ruins" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society wh...
Emily Cousens, "Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do "second wave" and "trans feminism" rarely get considered together? Challenging the idea that trans feminism is antagonistic to, or arrived afte...
Jason Blakely, "Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life" (Agenda Publishing, 2023)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his...
Alexandra Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" (Yale UP, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ayn Rand is a provocative and polarizing figure. Strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, Rand was a dogmatic preacher of her moral philosophy. Bas...
Douglas Greene, "The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge" (Routledge, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to the New Books Network is Doug Greene, here to discuss his book The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky (Routledge, 2024). Sp...
Laura Beers. "Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century" (Norton, 2024)
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is Orwell still relevant today? In Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Norton, 2024), Laura Beers, a Professor of Histor...
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our ...
Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the ...
Pawel Armada, "Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023)
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in Polish in 2019 by The Lethe Foundation, Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irvin...
Steven E. Lindquist, "The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya" (SUNY Press, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary...
Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagre...
Robin Darling Young et al, "Evagrius of Pontus: The Gnostic Trilogy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Gnostic Trilogy is the best-known and most important work by the ascetic philosopher and teacher Evagrius of Pontus. Among the writers of his age,...
Gilad Sharvit, "Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought (Brandeis UP, 2022) proposes a new understanding of modern Jewish theories of mes...
Hannah Freed-Thall, "Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons" (Columbia UP, 2023)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Departing from the conventional association of modernism with the city, Hannah Freed-Thall's Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal...
Ebony Nilsson, "Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Ebony Nilsson explores the lives ...
Quantifying the American Mind: George Gallup, and the Promise of Political Polling
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Early pollsters thought they had the psychological tools to quantify American mind, thereby enabling a truly democratic polity that would be governed ...
Nancy M. Bradbury, "Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the Canterbury Tales" (Penn State UP, 2024)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this elegantly written study Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the Canterbury Tales (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Nancy Mason Bradbur...
Mark Letteney, "The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations (Cambridge UP, 2023) traces the beginning of Late Ant...
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, "Fascism in America: Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Has fascism arrived in America? In Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge UP, 2023), Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered ex...
Francine Banner, "Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems" (U California Press, 2024)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Francine Banner is a fascinating cultural...
Breanne Fahs, "Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution" (Verso, 2020)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from t...
Stephen Harris, "Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Santideva on Virtue and Well-Being" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An influential eighth-century Buddhist text, Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Practices of Awakening, how to become a supremely...
Jeremiah Coogan, "Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The development of Christian scriptures did not terminate once, for example, following Irenaeus and other influential patristic figures, the four gosp...
Mahjabeen Dhala, "Feminist Theology and Social Justice in Islam: A Study on the Sermon of Fatima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, has an interesting legacy, one that is often shaped by sectarian differences and tensions. The sermon of Fa...
Michael Willrich, "American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or pri...
Yosefa Raz, "The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studie...