New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Alex Csiszar, "The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Alex Csiszar, professor in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University and author of The Scientific Jour...

Hoyt Long, "The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2021)

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ideas about how to study and understand cultural history—particularly literature—are rapidly changing as new digital archives and tools for search...

John Duncan, “Investigating Intelligence” (Open Agenda, 2021)

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Investigating Intelligence is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and neuroscientist John Duncan, University of Cambridge, ...

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

02 Aug 2021

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 ...

Iris Berent, "The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason about Human Nature" (Oxford UP, 2020)

02 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Do newborns think-do they know that 'three' is greater than 'two'? Do they prefer 'right' to 'wrong'? What about emotions--do newborns recognize happi...

Joseph Curtin, “The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled” (Open Agenda, 2021)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Science of Siren Songs: Stradivari Unveiled is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and master violinmaker and acoustici...

James Ladyman and K. Wiesner, "What Is a Complex System?" (Yale UP, 2020)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

While i find it pretty easy to recognize when i'm reading articles in complexity science, i've never been satisfied by definitions of complexity and r...

Stefan Collini, “The Two Cultures, Revisited” (Open Agenda, 2021)

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The ‘Two Cultures’ debate of the 1960s between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis is one of the most misunderstood intellectual disputes of the 20th centur...

Simon Ferdinand, "Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity (U Nebraska Press, 2019), Simon Ferdinand analyzes diverse map-base...

The Renewable Energy Revolution in East Asia and the Nordics

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The world is in a midst of a renewable energy revolution, with the price of utility scale photo-voltaic solar power falling by nearly 90% between 2009...

Eszter Varsa, "Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956" (Central European UP, 2020)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Eszter Varsa’s new book Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the 'Gypsy Question' in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1...

Gayle Rogers, "Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI" (Columbia UP, 2021)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a world that purports to know more about the future than any before it, why do we still need speculation? Insubstantial speculations – from utopi...

Joseph P. Laycock, "Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds" (U California Press, 2015)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that include...

Patricia Churchland, “Philosophy of Brain” (Open Agenda, 2021)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Philosophy of Brain is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland, UC San Diego. Patricia...

John Horgan, "Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science" (MIT Press, 2020)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What would it feel like to wake up inside the head of someone who writes about science for a living? John Horgan, acclaimed author of the bestseller ...

Michael Moore, "We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The image most of us have of whalers includes harpoons and intentional trauma. Yet eating commercially caught seafood leads to whales' entanglement an...

Rahul Mukherjee, "Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty" (Duke UP, 2020)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Radiant Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty (Duke UP, 2020), Rahul Mukherjee explores how the media coverage of nucl...

Popular Protests in the Age of #MilkTeaAlliance

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What influence can online and visual activism have on protest movements? With a wave of anti-establishment protests sweeping over East and Southeast A...

Eugene T. Richardson, "Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health" (MIT Press, 2020)

22 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how pub...

James Leo Cahill and Luca Caminati, "Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice" (Routledge, 2020)

22 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing together 18 contributions from leading international scholars, Cinema of Exploration: Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice (Routledge, 202...

Andrew Jenks, "Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth" (Anthem Press, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970...

Stacia Ryder et al., "Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene: From (Un)Just Presents to Just Futures" (Routledge, 2021)

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Through various international case studies presented by both practitioners and scholars, Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene: From (Un)Just Pre...

Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner, "Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s hard to imagine a place more central to American mythology today than Silicon Valley. To outsiders, the region glitters with the promise of ext...

Terry McGlynn, "The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Terry McGlynn, author of The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching (U Chicago Press, 2020). McGlynn is also a profe...

John Troyer, "Technologies of the Human Corpse" (MIT Press, 2020)

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination--not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that...

Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, "Forces of Nature: The Women who Changed Science" (Frances Lincoln, 2021)

16 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, dis...

Yurou Zhong, "Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916-1958" (Columbia UP, 2019)

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1928 linguist Yuen Ren Chao had reason to celebrate. The Nationalist government had just recognized his system for writing Chinese, Gwoyeu Romatzy...

Adam Crymble, "Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

15 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The digital age has touched and changed pretty much everything, even altering how historical research is practiced. In his new book Technology and th...

Lindy McDougall, "The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century" (Indiana UP, 2021)

14 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today on New Books in Gender Studies Jana Byars talks with Lindy McDougall, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia about her new book, The Perf...

Angus Fletcher, "Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature" (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

14 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere--from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others--each made a unique technical breakt...

Nicoletta Batini, "The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for Health and the Planet" (Island Press, 2021)

13 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Economics of Sustainable Food: Smart Policies for Health and the Planet (Island Press, 2021), Dr. Nicoletta Batini, and co-authors, unpack t...

Nima Arkani-Hamed, “The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed” (Open Agenda, 2021)

13 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nima Arkani-Hamed, faculty member at t...

Alyssa Ney, "The World in the Wave Function: A Metaphysics for Quantum Physics" (Oxford UP, 2021)

09 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Quantum mechanics is full of weird findings – for example, that systems widely separated can somehow still be correlated, and that a system may be i...

Thomas D. Mullaney et al., "Your Computer Is on Fire" (MIT Press, 2021)

09 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking ...

Warren Mansell, "The Interdisciplinary Handbook of Perceptual Control Theory" (Academic Press, 2020)

08 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Regular listeners to this podcast will be well aware of my strong conviction that the Perceptual Control Theory initially formulated by William T. Pow...

Kristin Poling, "Germany's Urban Frontiers: Nature and History on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century City" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

08 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In an era of transatlantic migration, Germans were fascinated by the myth of the frontier. Yet, for many, they were most likely to encounter frontier ...

Arunabh Ghosh, "Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People's Republic of China" (Princeton UP, 2020)

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first historical study of the development of statistics in Mao-era China, Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People’s Repu...

Martin Summers, "Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions" (Oxford UP, 2019)

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the c...

Stefan Vogler, "Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Sorting Sexualities: Expertise and the Politics of Legal Classification (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Stefan Vogler deftly unpacks the pol...

Catalina M. de Onís, "Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico" (U California Press, 2021)

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) provides an urgent and nuanced p...

Nathan R. Johnson, "Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age" (U Alabama Press, 2020)

06 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We are now living in the richest age of public memory. From museums and memorials to the vast digital infrastructure of the internet, access to the pa...

Jenny Price, "Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been ​“saving the planet” for decades…and environmental crises just get worse. All this Tesla driving and LEED building and carbon tra...

Sandeep Mertia, "Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India" (Institute of Networked Cultures, 2020)

05 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India (Institute of Networked Cultures, 2020) maps the historical and emergent dynamics of big d...

Luiz Valerio de Paula Trindade, "No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media" (Vernon Press, 2020)

02 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

No Laughing Matter: Race Joking and Resistance in Brazilian Social Media (Vernon Press, 2020) examines the social phenomenon of construction and diss...

Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

02 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Hea...

Open Access Publishing Explained: A Discussion with Ros Pyne

01 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to br...

stef m. shuster, "Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender" (NYU Press, 2021)

30 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A rich examination of the history of trans medicine and current day practice Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century, yet shrouded in social stigma, tr...

Rowena Lennox, "Dingo Bold: The Life and Death of K'gari Dingoes" (Sydney UP, 2021)

29 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Australia and dingos - we have a past and future, and not without controversy.  Dingo Bold: The Life and Death of K'gari Dingoes (Sydney UP, 2021) e...

Leah DeVun, "The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance" (Columbia UP, 2021)

29 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Leah DeVun is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Leah DeVun focuses on the history of gender, sexuality, science, and medicine i...

Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither sh...

Faith Kearns, "Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement" (Island Press, 2021)

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication (Island Press, 2021), Dr. Faith Kearns unpacks science communication as so much more than the “...

Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical...

Canay Özden-Schilling, "The Current Economy: Making Energy and Markets in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2021)

25 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Electricity is a quirky commodity: more often than not, it cannot be stored, easily transported, or imported from overseas. Before lighting up our hom...

Sarah K. Mock, "Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm" (New Degree Press, 2021)

23 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Farm (and Other F Words): The Rise and Fall of the Small Family Farm (New Degree Press, 2021), Sarah K. Mock seeks to answer “what exactly d...

Howard Burton, "First Principles: Building Perimeter Institute" (Open Agenda Publishing, 2021)

21 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this second edition of First Principles: Building Perimeter Institute, Howard Burton tells the remarkable and unconventional story—with a bold a...

Jessica Helfand, "Face: A Visual Odyssey" (MIT Press, 2019)

17 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Jessica Helfand about her new book Face: A Visual Odyssey (MIT Press, 2019) Helfand is a designer, artist, and author. She’s tau...

Gavin Van Horn and John Hausdoerffer, "Wildness: Relations of People and Place" (U Chicago Press, 2017)

16 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Whether referring to a place, a nonhuman animal or plant, or a state of mind, wild indicates autonomy and agency, a unique expression of life. Yet t...

Aim Sinpeng, "Opposing Democracy in the Digital Age: The Yellow Shirts in Thailand" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

15 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why did hundreds of thousands of Thai people rise up in opposition to elected governments in 2006, 2008 and 2013-14? What were the ideological underpi...

Javier Guerrero C., "Narcosubmarines: Outlaw Innovation and Maritime Interdiction in the War on Drugs" (Palgrave, 2020)

15 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Javier Guerrero's "Narcosubmarines: Outlaw Innovation and Maritime Interdiction in the War on Drugs" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) is about the encounter...

Howard Burton, "Conversations About Neuroscience" (Open Agenda, 2020)

14 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This Ideas Roadshow Collection includes five Ideas Roadshow books that have been developed from filmed wide-ranging conversations with the following l...

Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021)

11 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in Amer...

W. Patrick McCray, "Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture" (MIT Press, 2020)

09 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Artwork as opposed to experiment? Engineer versus artist? We often see two different cultural realms separated by impervious walls. But some fifty yea...

George Szmukler, "Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion" (Oxford UP, 2017)

09 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their...

A. Burton and R. Mawani, "Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times" (Duke UP, 2020)

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to An...

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "Objectivity" (Zone Books, 2010)

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Obj...

Jonathan Rauch, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth" (Brookings, 2021)

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years Americans have experienced a range of assaults upon the truth. In The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Insti...

Suzanne L. Marchand, "Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe" (Princeton UP, 2020)

04 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Suzanne L. Marchand's new book Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020) balances several histories at once t...

Maneesha Deckha, "Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

04 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders (University of Toronto Press, 2021), Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Can...

S. Livingstone and A. Blum-Ross, "Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives" (Oxford UP, 2020)

03 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview, I talked with Professor Sonia Livingstone about her book Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shap...

Carla Diana, "My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human" (Harvard Business, 2021)

03 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Carla Diana about her new book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press...

Rob Boddice, "Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this compelling history of the co-ordinated, transnational defence of medical experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rob ...

Amy D. Finstein, "Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-interstate America" (Temple UP, 2020)

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the first half of the twentieth century, urban elevated highways were much more than utilitarian infrastructure, lifting traffic above the streets;...

Cara A. Finnegan, "Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital" (U Illinois Press, 2021)

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Defining the Chief Executive via flash powder and selfie sticks. In this episode, Dr. Lee M. Pierce (they & she) interviews Dr. Cara A. Finnegan about...

Skylar Tibbits, "Things Fall Together: A Guide to the New Materials Revolution" (Princeton UP, 2021)

01 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Things in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today’s researchers are exploitin...

Patrick Maille, "The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)

01 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Cards: The History and Power of Tarot (University Press of Mississippi, 2021), Patrick Maille examines the history of Tarot cards and their p...

Mikiya Koyagi, "Iran in Motion: Mobility, Space, and the Trans-Iranian Railway" (Stanford UP, 2021)

01 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Completed in 1938, the Trans-Iranian Railway connected Tehran to Iran's two major bodies of water: the Caspian Sea in the north and the Persian Gulf i...

Howard Burton, "Conversations About Astrophysics & Cosmology" (Open Agenda, 2020)

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This Ideas Roadshow Collection includes five Ideas Roadshow books that have been developed from filmed wide-ranging conversations with the following l...

Ellen Peters, "Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers" (Oxford UP, 2020)

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

To many mathematicians and math enthusiasts, the word "innumeracy" brings to mind popular writing like that of John Allen Paulos. But inequities in ou...

Jurgen Martschukat, "The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement" (Polity, 2021)

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today on New Books in History, Juergen Martschukat, professor of North American History at Universitat Erfurt, talks about his new book, The Age of ...

Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, "Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access" (MIT Press, 2020)

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, editors of Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Glob...

Zahi Zalloua, "Being Posthuman: Ontologies of the Future" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The figure of the human looms large of the history of philosophy, from the ancient Greeks speculating about featherless bipeds to contemporary program...

Randolph M. Nesse, "Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry" (Dutton, 2019)

28 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why do I feel bad? There is real power in understanding our bad feelings. With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish t...

Tim Lockley, "Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments, 1795–1874" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

26 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Tim Lockley demonstrates ...

Linda Colley, "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World" (Liveright, 2021)

26 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Linda Colley is a luminary in the fields of British and imperial history, and the Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University...

Jenny Bangham, "Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

26 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the inti...

Heba Y. Amin, "The General's Stork" (Sternberg Press, 2020)

25 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork for espionage. This incident is the focus of Heba Y. Amin’s The General’s Stork, an ongo...

Alex Wellerstein, "Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

24 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ...

Deborah R. Coen, "The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter" (U Chicago Press, 2013)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recording...

Makis Solomos, "From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music" (Routledge, 2019)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In From Music to Sound: The Emergence of Sound in 20th and 21st-century Music (Routledge, 2019), Makis Solomos (Professor of Musicology, Universit...

Joseph Rouse, "Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image" (U Chicago Press, 2015)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Naturalism as a guiding philosophy for modern science both disavows any appeal to the supernatural or anything else transcendent to nature, and repudi...

Ellen Helsper, "The Digital Disconnect: The Social Causes and Consequences of Digital Inequalities" (Sage, 2021)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What are digital inequalities? In The Digital Disconnect: The Social Causes and Consequences of Digital Inequalities (Sage, 2021), Ellen Helsper, a...

Rob Kitchin, "Data Lives: How Data Are Made and Shape Our World" (Policy Press, 2021)

20 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The word ‘data’ has entered everyday conversation, but do we really understand what it means? How can we begin to grasp the scope and scale of our...

Aaron Shapiro, "Design, Control, Predict: Logistical Governance in the Smart City" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

19 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The “smart” city of today looks little like what experts of yesteryear expected them to. In this book, Aaron Shapiro, Ph.D. takes readers on a b...

L. Ayu Saraswati, "Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie" (NYU Press, 2021)

19 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Social media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts...

Climate Denialism and Propaganda with Catriona McKinnon

18 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Catriona McKinnon is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on climate ethics and environmental justice. Much...

Zoetanya Sujon, "The Social Media Age" (Sage, 2021)

18 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How has social media shaped contemporary society? In The Social Media Age (Sage, 2021), Zoetanya Sujon, a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director i...

Michael D. Gordin, "On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience" (Oxford UP, 2021)

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unp...

Adam Rogers, "Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern" (Houghton Mifflin, 2021)

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From kelly green to millennial pink, our world is graced with a richness of colors. But our human-made colors haven’t always matched nature’s kale...

Bijal P. Trivedi, "Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine Forever" (Benbella, 2020)

13 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of e...

Lucy van de Wiel, "Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Aging" (NYU Press, 2020)

12 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How does egg freezing reshape our conception of time, aging and fertility? In her new monograph, Freezing Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the ...