New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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 ...

Michelle Nijhuis, "Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction" (Norton, 2021)

12 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the late nineteenth century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species...

Jason Karlawish, "The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It" (St. Martin's Press, 2021)

11 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complicati...

Can we Disagree Online Respectfully?: A Discussion with Ian Leslie

11 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we are talking to a British writer Ian Leslie, a journalist and author of acclaimed books on human behavior. His latest book, Confl...

Scott Berkun, "How Design Makes the World" (2020)

11 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Everything you use, from your home to your smartphone, from highways to supermarkets, was designed by someone. What did they get right? Where did they...

Tetyana Lokot, "Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)

10 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tetyana Lokot's new book Beyond the Protest Square: Digital Media and Augmented Dissent (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) examines how citizens use digit...

T. Sanders et al., "Paying for Sex in a Digital Age: US and UK Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020)

10 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Providing one of the first comprehensive, cross-cultural examinations of the dynamic market for sexual services, this book presents an evidence-based ...

Pallavi Guha, "Hear #metoo in India: News, Social Media, and Anti-Rape and Sexual Harassment Activism" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

07 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hello Everyone, and welcome to New Books in Gender and Sexuality, a channel on the New Books Network. I’m your host, Jana Byars, and I’m here toda...

Jillian C. York, "Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism" (Verso Book, 2021)

06 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is the impact of surveillance capitalism on our right to free speech? The Internet once promised to be a place of extraordinary freedom beyond th...

Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym, "Twitter: A Biography" (NYU Press, 2020)

06 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As Twitter enters its own adolescence, both the users and the creators of this famous social media platform find themselves engaging with a tool tha...

Susan M. Reverby, "Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy" (UNC Press, 2013)

05 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Some books are new, others are newly relevant – and so worth looking at from a new, contemporary perspective. Such is the case with Susan Reverby’...

David Rainbow, "Ideologies of Race: Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in Global Context" (McGill-Queen's Press, 2019)

05 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Conflicting notions about the dynamics of race in Russia and the Soviet Union have made it difficult for both scholars and other observers of the regi...

Patrick Vitale, "Nuclear Suburbs: Cold War Technoscience and the Pittsburgh Renaissance" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

05 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From submarines to the suburbs--the remaking of Pittsburgh during the Cold War During the early Cold War, research facilities became ubiquitous featur...

Daniel Greene, "The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope" (MIT Press, 2021)

03 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we keep trying to solve poverty with technology? What makes us feel that we need to learn to code--or else? In The Promise of Access: Technolo...

Carol Dyhouse, "Love Lives: From Cinderella to Frozen" (Oxford UP, 2021)

03 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cinderella stories captured the imagination of girls in the 1950s, when dreams of meeting the right man could seem like a happy ending, a solution to ...

Mary A. Brazelton, "Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2019)

30 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. D...

Elise K. Burton, "Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity" (Stanford UP, 2021)

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Elise K. Burton’s important book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021), documen...

John Ferris, "Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

28 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For more than a hundred years, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has played a central role in the conduct of British statecraft. But the ...

Brent D. Ziarnick, "To Rule the Skies: General Thomas S. Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War" (US Naval Institute Press, 2021)

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A sadist. A madman. A sociopath seduced by the terrible allure of nuclear weapons. These are but a few of the pejoratives commonly used to describe Un...

Dave Auckly, et al., "Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles" (AMS, 2019)

27 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Math circles defy simple narratives. The model was introduced a century ago, and is taking off in the present day thanks in part to its congruence wit...

Melvin Konner, "Believers: Faith in Human Nature" (Norton, 2019)

26 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist's answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is a...

Leigh Calvez, "The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature's Most Elusive Birds" (Sasquatch Books, 2016)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Join naturalist and science writer Leigh Calvez on her adventures into science and spirit of animals, as we discuss her two recent books: The Hidde...

James Doucet-Battle, "Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so f...

Douglas M. O'Reagan, "Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Dou...

Robert T. Tierney, "Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame" (U California Press, 2010)

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (U California Press, 2010) is an incisive and provocative study of the figur...

Daniel Heifetz, "The Science of Satyug: Class, Charisma, and Vedic Revivalism in the All World Gayatri Pariwar" (SUNY Press, 2021)

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first in-depth study of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, a modern Indian religious movement. The All World Gayatri Pariwar is a modern religious mov...

Mathew Sweezey, "The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media" (Harvard Business Press, 2020)

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Mathew Sweezy about his new book The Context Marketing Revolution: How to Motivate Buyers in the Age of Infinite Media (Harvard...

Joel Waldfogel, "Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture" (Princeton UP, 2020)

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Digitization is reshaping creative industries. Old gatekeepers in music, publishing, television, movies, and other industries no longer play such an i...

Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia, "Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan" (Stanford UP, 2019)

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the pos...

Kas Saghafi, "The World after the End of the World: A Spectro-Poetics" (SUNY Press, 2020)

20 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I interview Kas Saghafi, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis, about his book The World After the End of t...

Carolyn J. Heinrich, et al., "Equity and Quality in Digital Learning: Realizing the Promise in K-12 Education" (Harvard Education Press, 2020)

20 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID19 pandemic has profoundly changed the landscape of K-12 education in our society. Last March, many states closed their brick-and-mortar scho...

Allison Cobb, "Plastic: An Autobiography" (Nightboat Books, 2021)

20 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic: An Autobiography (Nightboat Books, 2021) explores how technology, sprung from desire, draws all beings into its net, and asks how to live j...

R. Armstrong and R. Hughes "The Art of Experiment: Post-Pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st-Century Architecture and Design" (Routledge, 2020)

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Art of Experiment: Post-Pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st-Century Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2020) is a handbook for navigating our ...

Jon Birger, "Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge" (Benbella, 2021)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Apps have transformed dating from a mysterious adventure into a daily chore. Young, single, college-educated women are sick and tired of competing for...

David Wills, "Prosthesis" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I interview David Wills, professor of French Studies at Brown University, about his book, Prosthesis, recently republished for its 2...

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" (HarperCollins, 2017)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Economist, data journalist, and best-selling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses data from the internet to gain new insights into the human psyche....

Can We Fix Social Media?: A Discussion with Christopher A. Bail

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We ...

Jürgen P. Melzer, "Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation" (Harvard UP, 2020)

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jürgen Melzer’s Wings for the Rising Sun: A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation (Harvard UP, 2020) traces the history of Japanese aviation...

Christopher Thaiss, "Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century" (Broadview Press, 2019)

14 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Christopher Thaiss, author of Writing Science in the Twenty-First Century (Broadview Press 2019). We talk about the rese...

Maria San Filippo, "Provocauteurs and Provocations: Screening Sex in 21st Century Media" (Indiana UP, 2021)

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Twenty-first century media has increasingly turned to provocative sexual content to generate buzz and stand out within a glut of programming. New dist...

Philip N. Howard, "Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives" (Yale UP, 2020)

12 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Technology is breaking politics - what can be done about it? Artificially intelligent "bot" accounts attack politicians and public figures on social m...

Mark A. Waddell, "Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

09 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today on New Books in History, Mark A. Waddell, Associate professor of History, Philosophy & Sociology of Science in the Department of History at Mic...

Avi Loeb, "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth" (Houghton Mifflin, 2021)

06 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only hav...

Lucas Richert, "Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture" (MIT Press, 2020)

05 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. Th...

James S. J. Schwartz, "The Value of Science in Space Exploration" (Oxford UP, 2020)

05 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Value of Science in Space Exploration (Oxford UP, 2020) provides a rigorous assessment of the value of scientific knowledge and understanding in ...

Doug Bierend. "In Search of Mycotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms" (Chelsea Green, 2021)

02 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

From ecology to fermentation, in pop culture and in medicine—mushrooms are everywhere. With an explorer’s eye, author Doug Bierend guides readers ...

Edward Ashford Lee, "The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines" (MIT Press, 2020)

02 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Are humans defining technology, or is technology defining humans? In The Coevolution: The Entwined Futures of Humans and Machines (MIT Press, 2020),...

Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)

31 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942...

Agnieszka Kościańska, "Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland" (Indiana UP, 2021)

31 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly su...

Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)

31 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and s...

Roy Richard Grinker, "Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness" (Norton, 2021)

30 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centur...

Katherine E. Standefer, "Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life" (Little, Brown Spark, 2020)

30 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As the push for a Universal Healthcare system in the United States becomes more and more popular among the American people, we’re beginning to have ...

Sara Ritchey, "Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health" (Cornell UP, 2021)

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We are here today with Sara Ritchey, associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN, about her new book, Acts of Car...

William Max Nelson, "The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future...

Lukas Engelmann and Christos Lynteris, "Sulphuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation" (MIT Press, 2020)

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As we mark the one-year anniversary of the COIVD-19 pandemic, take the time to listen to this discussion of previous efforts to fight yellow fever, ch...

John Durham Peters et al., "Action at a Distance" (Meson Press, 2020)

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary media leads us more than ever to an ‘acting at a distance,’ an acting entangled with the materiality of communication and the mediali...

Aaron Tugendhaft, "The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

25 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, the Islamic State released a video of men smashing sculptures in Iraq’s Mosul Museum as part of a mission to cleanse the world of idolatry....

Courtney E. Thompson, "An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the origins of both popular and elite t...

A. Blair and K. von Greyerz, "Physico-Theology: Religion and Science in Europe, 1650–1750 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz have edited an outstanding volume that breaks important new ground in the history of early modern science and religio...

Alisha Rankin, "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science" (Alisha Rankin, 2021)

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poiso...

Mitchell L. Hammond, "Epidemics and the Modern World" (University of Toronto Press, 2020)

17 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Normally we write blogposts that try to convince you to listen to a conversation with an author about their fascinating book. In the time of COVID-19,...

Juno Salazar Parreñas, "Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation" (Duke University Press, 2018)

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke University Press, 2018) presents a multi-species ethnography of orangutan...

Katie Hindmarch-Watson, "Serving a Wired World: London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital" (U California Press, 2020)

15 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How did telecommunications shape Victorian London? In Serving a Wired World London's Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capi...

David Payne on the Community of Scientists and Diversity

12 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of David Payne, who is Chief Careers Editor at Nature. We talk about high quality writing, about the gracious community of...

Liat Ben-Moshe, "Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

12 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral fa...

J. L. Heilbron, "The Ghost of Galileo: In a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2021)

10 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

John Heilbron, professor of history and vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of our most distinguished - and pro...

Pey-Yi Chu, "The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

09 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the Anthropocene, the thawing of frozen earth due to global warming has drawn worldwide attention to permafrost. Contemporary scientists define per...

Edzard Ernst, "Chiropractic: Not All That It's Cracked Up to Be" (Springer, 2020)

08 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Of all forms of alternative medicine, chiropractic is the one that is most generally accepted. In the UK, for instance, chiropractors are regulated by...

John M. Janzen, "Health in a Fragile State. Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo" (Wisconsin UP, 2019)

08 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

John M. Janzen's Health in a Fragile State: Science, Sorcery, and Spirit in the Lower Congo (Wisconsin University Press, 2019) offers a granular an...

Evan Friss, "The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s" (U Chicago Press, 2015)

05 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today on New Books in History, Dr. Evan Friss, associate professor of history at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia in the US to talk...