New Books In Public Health

Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at R...

Erica Borgstrom and Renske Visser, "Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement" (Routledge, 2024)

26 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement (Routledge, 2025) by Professor Erica Borgstrom & Dr. Renske Visser is the first of its kind to ex...

Casey Golomski, "God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room: Racial ...

David Lyon, "Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Surveillance is everywhere today, generating data about our purchasing, political, and personal preferences. Surveillance: A Very Short Introduction ...

Michael Bresalier, "Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890—1950 (Palgr...

Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press...

Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024)

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a s...

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

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...

Cindy Ermus, "The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Cindy Ermus on her recently published book, The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in t...

Carrie N. Baker, "Abortion Pills: US History and Politics" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Pr...

Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah, "Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States" (NYU Press, 2024)

28 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on...

Daniel S. Goldberg, "Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professi...

Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik ...

Public Healthcare Under Decentralized Governance in Indonesia and the Philippines

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode focuses on the policy challenges and politics of public healthcare in Southeast Asia, a topic which has become increasingly visible ...

Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathet...

Travis A. Weisse, "Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness" (UNC Press, 2024)

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) Dr. Travis A. Weisse tells ...

George Severs, "Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Dr George Severs draws on activist campaign lite...

Muhammad H. Zaman, "We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are dis...

Paul M. Renfro, "The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America" (UNC Press, 2024)

10 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan Whi...

Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standard...

Gareth Millward, "Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State" (Oxford UP, 2022)

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State (Oxford UP, 2022) is a history of how the British state asked, 'who is really sick?' Tracing medica...

Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023)

03 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditi...

Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict ...

Michael G. Vann, "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2018)

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A funny thing happened to historian Michael Vann* on the way to his PhD thesis. While he was doing his research on French colonialism and the urbanist...

Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021)

20 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and...

Susan Grant, "Soviet Nightingales: Care Under Communism" (Cornell UP, 2022)

19 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism (Cornell UP, 2022), Susan Grant examines the history of nursing care in the Soviet Union from its ninet...

Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton, "Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

05 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and fami...

Mercy Ships (with Reanne Newquist)

01 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Reanne Newquist tells me about her voyage on Mercy Ships bringing healthcare to some of the poorest people in the world, a mission started by Don Step...

Camilla Nord, "The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health" (Princeton UP, 2024)

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific devel...

John P. Davis, "Russia in the Time of Cholera" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of “backwardness” often plagues historical writing on Russia. In Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (Bloom...

John S. Garrison, "Red Hot + Blue" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

John Garrison's Red Hot + Blue (33 1/3 Series) (Bloomsbury, 2024)  is a meditation on music's capacity to find us, transform us, and help us make ...

Susan Greenhalgh, "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

31 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (U Chicago Press, 2024) takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powe...

Aimee Louise Middlemiss, "Invisible Labours: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events...

Alice Mah, "Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation" (Duke UP, 2023)

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is a green future possible? In Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation (Duke UP, 2023), Alice Mah, a Professor in U...

The GiveWell Method

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Caleb Zakarin and Uri Bram dive into the world of effective charitable giving through the lens of GiveWell, an organization known for...

Fella Benabed, "Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel" (de Gruyter, 2024)

27 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fella Benabed's book Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel (de Gruyter, 2024) highlights the importance of globa...

Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)

26 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global...

Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, "Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Distributed to millions of people annually across Africa and the global south, insecticide-treated bed nets have become a cornerstone of malaria contr...

Seth A. Berkowitz, "Equal Care: Health Equity, Social Democracy, and the Egalitarian State" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Health inequity is one of the defining problems of our time. But current efforts to address the problem focus on mitigating the harms of injustice rat...

Angela Garcia, "The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos" (FSG, 2024)

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Based on over a decade of research, a powerful, moving work of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the little-known world of the anexos of Mexico Ci...

Holly Ashford, "Development and Women's Reproductive Health in Ghana, 1920-1982" (Routledge, 2022)

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Between the 1920s and 1980s, the choices that Ghanaian women made regarding their reproductive health were defined by development policy and practice....

Pandemics Perspectives 15: The Dynamic Nature of Science

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Michael Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Cont...

John Thomas Maier, "The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction" (Routledge, 2024)

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

John T. Maier's The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction (Routledge Press, 2024) defends a comprehensive new vision of what addiction is and how p...

Carl Elliott, "The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No" (Norton, 2024)

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No (Norton, 2024) is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle ...

Andrew McDowell, "Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India" (Stanford UP, 2024)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Each year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly lung disease. The co...

Pandemic Perspectives 13: The Need for Genuine Communication

09 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Elizabeth Anderson, Max Shaye Professor of Public Philos...

Tom Mueller, "How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine" (Norton, 2023)

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dialysis is a medical miracle, a treatment that allows people with kidney failure to live when otherwise they would die. It also provides a captive cu...

Premilla Nadasen, "Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2023)

25 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

During the COVID pandemic, billions of dollars in relief aid was sent out to help us ride out the storm, although many people who struggled through it...

Sarah Cassella, "Global Risks and International Law: The Case of Climate Change and Pandemics" (Brill/Nijhoff, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Global risks present formidable challenges to international law. Although they have long been identified in many other scientific disciplines, they ar...

Ryan Reft, "Heroin and Chocolate City: Black Community Responses to Drug Addiction in the Nation’s Capital, 1967-1973" (2024)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ryan Reft is a historian in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, where he oversees collections pertaining to 20th and 21st century dom...

Kate Morgan, "The Walnut Tree: Women, Violence and the Law – A Hidden History" (Mudlark, 2024)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they’ll be.' So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of P...

Marina Welker, "Kretek Capitalism: Making, Marketing, and Consuming Clove Cigarettes in Indonesia" (U California Press, 2024)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Indonesia is the world's second largest cigarette market: two out of three men smoke, and clove-laced tobacco cigarettes called kretek make up 95 perc...

The Contagion of Covid Policy: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Freedom of Speech

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After a storied career as a health policy expert, Stanford Medicine's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's work became a political focal point during the COVID-19 p...

Susan Partovi, "Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets" (Bookbaby, 2024)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Susan Partovi first experienced poverty medicine volunteering at a dump site in Tijuana during high school. There, she recognized the need for all...

Bobby Cherayil, "The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us appreciate the importance of the immune system yet have very little knowledge about how it actually works. If you fall into this camp and a...

Lawson R. Wulsin, "Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our stress response system is magnificent - it operates beneath our awareness, like an orchestra of organs playing a hidden symphony. When we are heal...

Sharrona Pearl, "Mask" (Bloombury, 2024)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the theatre mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument fo...

Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya t...

Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media (Duke UP. 2023), Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations ...

Kris Butler, "Drink Maps in Victorian Britain" (Bodleian Library, 2024)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is a ‘drink map’? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specificall...

José Tenorio, "School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies" (Routledge, 2023)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For decades now, we’ve all heard the refrain – we are in a war against obesity, with perhaps the most important battle being fought over the healt...

India’s Waste Problem: A Discussion with Pamela Das

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How is India tackling its persistent wage management problems? And, are new infrastructural solutions the way forward? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nie...

Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 20...

Reducing Barriers to Language Assistance in Hospital

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Brynn Quick speaks with Erin Mulpur about how hospitals can better support patients from linguistic minority backgrounds. The conversation addresse...

Colin Elliott, "Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that s...

Charlie Hertzog Young, "Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future" (Footnote Press, 2023)

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Charlie Hertzog Young became a climate activist in his early teens. His journey led him onto airport runways and into the halls of power, but also to ...

Xaq Frohlich on the History of Food Labeling

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Xaq Frolich, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University, about his new book, From Label to Table...

Benjamin J. Pauli, "Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis" (MIT Press, 2019)

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Originally published in 2019, Benjamin Pauli’s book, Flint Fights Back offers lasting insights into one of the most important drinking water-caused ...

Christy Spackman, "The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage" (U California Press, 2023)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage...

Kristine M. McCusker, "Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kristine M. McCusker's book Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955 (U Illino...

Judith Pearson, "Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2023)

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they crea...

The Taste of Water: A Conversation with Christy Spackman

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After WAY too long a hiatus, Peoples & Things is back! GET EXCITED!! In this episode, host Lee Vinsel interviews Christy Spackman, Assistant Professor...

Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An enduring paradox of urban public health is that many communities around hospitals are economically distressed and, counterintuitively, medically un...

Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, "American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15" (FSG, 2023)

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner so...

Max Felker-Kantor, "DARE to Say No: Policing and the War on Drugs in Schools" (UNC Press, 2023)

17 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With its signature "DARE to keep kids off drugs" slogan and iconic t-shirts, DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was the most popular drug educatio...

Brian H. Williams, "The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)

10 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all: gunshot wounds, stabbings, and traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Comin...

Robert Alpert et al., "Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

06 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As I may be the target audience for Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies (Edinburgh UP, 2023), I really enjoyed interv...

George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)

03 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial M...

Matthew D. Lassiter, "The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs" (Princeton UP, 2023)

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority pop...

Caitlin Killian, "Failing Moms: Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers" (Polity Press, 2023)

29 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The role of mother is often celebrated in the United States as the most important job in the world but Dr. Caitlin Killian argues that American mother...

Sandro Galea, "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

28 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A provocative chronicle of how US public health has strayed from its liberal roots. The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health...

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, "Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

20 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Professor of History at The New School, and author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s...

Patricia Strach and Kathleen S. Sullivan, "The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929" (Cornell UP, 2023)

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientists Patricia Strach (The University at Albany, State University of New York) and Kathleen S. Sullivan (Ohio University) have written ...

Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)

10 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In ...

Chinmay Tumbe, "The Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World" (Harper Collins, 2020)

03 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel I spoke with Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute ...

David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)

26 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Cou...

Nessette Falu, "Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil" (Duke UP, 2023)

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2023) Nessette Falu explores how Black lesbians in Brazil...

Talking to Strangers: A Discussion with Psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Can the kindness of strangers help with the loneliness crisis? Whether you are a student, staff, or have gone alt-ac, you’ve likely had to move at l...

Adrienne E. Strong, "Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania" (U California Press, 2020)

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania (University of California Press, 2020) is a gripping ethnographic account of...

Jenny Trinitapoli, "An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

20 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implicatio...

Brian Brown and Virginia Kuulei Berndt, "Body Art" (Emerald Publishing, 2023)

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Body art, especially tattoos and piercings, has enjoyed an explosion of interest in recent years. However, the response of many health professionals a...

Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Cervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What's more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that's nearly 100% preventabl...

Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States has more guns than people – a condition that is “unprecedented in world history.” Scholars often focus on gun culture, the Sec...

Astra Taylor, "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart" (House of Anansi Press, 2023)

28 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those wh...

Leontina Hormel, "Trailer Park America: Reimagining Working-Class Communities" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In rural northern Idaho in the winter of 2013-2014, Syringa Mobile Home Park’s water system was contaminated by sewage, resulting in residents’ wa...

Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023)

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why is cows' milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the populat...

Xaq Frohlich, "From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age" (U California Press, 2023)

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition ...

Colin McFarlane, "Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife" (Verso, 2023)

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In an age of pandemics the relationship between the health of the city and good sanitation has never been more important. Colin McFarlane, through W...

Linda L. Michaels et al.. "Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice" (Routledge, 2023)

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023) brings together a global community o...

Jeremy Howick, "The Power of Placebos: Unlocking Their Potential to Improve Health Care" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

05 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Should your doctor prescribe a placebo for you, instead of conventional medicine? And if she did, would it work? Is the double-blind placebo-controlle...