New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Roland T. Rust and Ming-Hui Huang, "The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Ming-Hui Huang about her book (coauthored with Roland T. Rust), The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the ...
Common Ground Scholar: A Discussion with Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, creators of the website newlearningonline.com and also professors at the College of Educat...
J. Jureidini and L. B. McHenry, "The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the Crisis of Credibility in Clinical Research" (Wakefield Press, 2020)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An exposé of the corruption of medicine by the pharmaceutical industry at every level, from exploiting the vulnerable destitute for drug testing, thr...
Han Yu, "Mind Thief: The Story of Alzheimer's" (Columbia UP, 2021)
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alzheimer’s disease, a haunting and harrowing ailment, is one of the world’s most common causes of death. Alzheimer’s lingers for years, with pa...
Ronald J. Deibert, "Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society" (House of Anansi, 2020)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ronald Deibert is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and the Director of The Citizen Lab, a public interest research organi...
Teresa Berger, "@Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds" (Routledge, 2018)
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Digital dualism, or a sharp division between online and offline activity as "virtual" or "real" has long been a feature of liturgical studies and disc...
Erika Engelhaupt, "Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science" (National Geographic, 2020)
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Would your dog eat you if you died? What are face mites? Why do clowns creep us out? In this illuminating collection of grisly true science stories, j...
L. Vinsel and A. L. Russell, "The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most" (Currency, 2020)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a...
Tracie White and Ronald W. Davis, "The Puzzle Solver: A Scientist's Desperate Hunt to Cure the Illness That Stole His Son" (Hachette, 2021)
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Based on a viral article, the gripping medical mystery story of Ron Davis, a world-class Stanford geneticist who has put his career on the line to fin...
Seema Yasmin, "Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Can your zip code predict when you will die? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e...
Jacob Steere-Williams, "The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific d...
Nicole Perlroth, "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For years, cybersecurity experts have debated whether cyber-weapons represent a destabilizing new military technology or merely the newest tool in the...
Alan Lightman, "Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings" (Pantheon, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Imagination with a Straight Jacket Alan Lightman is a writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Ma...
S. Carlsson and J. Leijonhufvud, "The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance" (Diversion Books, 2021)
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fifteen years ago in Stockholm, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had a big idea. The music industry was playing a desperate game of whack-a-mole with pi...
Emily Willingham, "Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis" (Avery, 2020)
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The fallacy sold to many of us is that the penis signals dominance and power. But this wry and penetrating book reveals that in fact nature did not sh...
David Badre, "On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done" (Princeton UP, 2020)
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton UP, 2020) is a look at the extraordinary ways the brain turns thoughts into actions—and how thi...
Hannah Marcus, "Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Hannah Marcus, Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a...
Daniel B. Rood, "The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The period of the "second slavery" was marked by geographic expansion of zones of slavery into the Upper US South, Cuba, and Brazil and chronological ...
Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, "Vera Rubin: A Life" (Harvard UP, 2021)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few astronomers in the 20th century did as much to expand our understanding of the universe as Vera Rubin. To tell her remarkable story in their biog...
Henry T. Greely, "CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans" (The MIT Press, 2021)
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does the birth of babies whose embryos have gone through genome editing mean—for science and for all of us? In November 2018, the world was sho...
Nathaniel Greenberg, "How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Egypt and Tunisia" (Edinburgh UP, 2019)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London p...
Jeremy Black, "A History of the 20th Century: Conflict, Technology & Rock'n'roll" (Sirius Entertainment, 2021)
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black – professor of history at Exeter University, and one of the world’s most prolific writers – has just published an outstanding illus...
Jack Price, "The Future of Brain Repair: A Realist's Guide to Stem Cell Therapy" (MIT Press, 2020)
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A scientist assesses the potential of stem cell therapies for treating such brain disorders as stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s diseas...
Nina Jankowicz, "How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Barely a month after the riot on the Capitol Building, the United States is no more adept at fending off foreign information operations than it was fo...
Tara Fickle, "The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities" (NYU Press, 2019)
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This unique episode features a dual/duel interview with two authors whose recent books focus on the overlapping contexts and theories of Game Studies ...
Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A four-hundred-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. Tracing the development of al...
Matthieu Ricard, "A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion" (Shambhala, 2016)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Matthieu Ricard about two books. The first is A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to T...
Michael Rossi, "The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America" (Chicago UP, 2019)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The appreciation of color is considered universal among human societies, yet varies vastly according to cultural norms and material circumstances. In ...
Ethan Lou, "Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended" (Signal, 2020)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are just over a year from when global news first reported a new type of pneumonia emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A lockdown of Wuhan on Jan...
Earl Wright II, "Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology" (University of Cincinnati Press, 2020)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology (U Cincinnati Press, 2020) is an extraordinary new volume that examines the o...
Jon Birger, "Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge" (BenBella Books, 2021)
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Modern romance is broken. It's time to flip the script. Apps have transformed dating from a mysterious adventure into a daily chore. Young, single, co...
Theresia Hofer, "Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform" (U Washington Press, 2018)
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform (University of Washington Press, 2018) is the first full-length ethnography of Tib...
James E. Baker, "The Centaur's Dilemma: US National Security Law for the Coming AI Revolution" (Brookings, 2020)
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From facial recognition to online shopping, artificial intelligence has become the backbone of the internet and has led to an unprecedented extraction...
Simon Baron-Cohen, "The Pattern Seekers: A New Theory of Human Invention" (Allen Lane, 2020)
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why are humans alone capable of invention? This question is relevant to every human invention, from music to mathematics, sculpture and science, datin...
Emmanuel Kreike, "Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature" (Princeton UP, 2021)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime Against Humanity and Nature (Princeton UP, 2021), Emmanuel Kreike offers a global history of env...
J. Rosenhouse, "Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles" (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Rosenhouse's Games for Your Mind: The History and Future of Logic Puzzles (Princeton UP, 2020) is about a panoply of logic puzzles. You’ll f...
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hos...
David Sepkoski, "Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We...
Anna L. Tsing, "Feral Atlas: The More-than-human Anthropocene" (Stanford UP, 2020)
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do you feel lost in the Anthropocene? Would you like a map to chart your way through our changing world? How about an atlas? Well, the Feral Atlas Col...
R. A. Woldoff and R. C. Litchfield, "Digital Nomads: In Search of Freedom, Community, and Meaningful Work in the New Economy" (Oxford UP, 2021)
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the space of a few weeks this spring, organizations around the world learned that many traditional, in-person jobs could, in fact, be performed rem...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University...
R. Douglas Fields, "Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better" (BenBella, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Electric Brain: How the New Science of Brainwaves Reads Minds, Tells Us How We Learn, and Helps Us Change for the Better (BenBella, 2020), eminen...
L. Ferlier and B. Miyamoto, "Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832" (Brill, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832 (Brill, 2020) explores the printscape – the mental m...
Andrew Jewett, "Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that...
Rob DeSalle, "A Natural History of Color: The Science Behind What We See and How We See it" (Pegasus Books, 2020)
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Is color a phenomenon of science or a thing of art? Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see, embraced through the ...
M. Nestle and K. Trueman, "Let's Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health" (U California Press, 2020)
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Marion Nestle describes her new book as “a small, quick and dirty reader for the general audience” summarizing some of her biggest and most influe...
Kyle Johannsen, "Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering" (Routledge, 2020)
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many sentient (or possibly sentient) wild animals follow a reproductive strategy whereby they have large numbers of offspring, the vast majority of wh...
Snezana Lawrence, "A New Year's Present from a Mathematician" (CRC Press, 2019)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It would be simple enough to say that mathematics is being done, and that those who do it are mathematicians. Yet, the history and culture of the math...
Michael Fisch, "An Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo's Commuter Train Network" (U of Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Ea...
Daniel Oberhaus, "Extraterrestrial Languages" (MIT Press, 2019)
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Extraterrestrial Languages (MIT Press 2020), Daniel Oberhaus tells the history of human efforts to talk to aliens, but in doing so, the book refl...
Daniel A. Barber, "Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning" (Princeton UP, 2020)
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs,...
Robert Baker, "The Structure of Moral Revolutions: Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion, Death, and the Bioethics Revolution" (MIT Press, 2019)
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded...
Jennifer Burek Pierce, "Narratives, Nerdfighters, and New Media" (U Iowa Press, 2020)
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nerdfighteria started over a decade ago by brothers Hank and John Green who decided to provide literacy themed programming on their website and YouTub...
Can we Bring Extinct Species Back?: A Conversation with Beth Shapiro
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of...
Charles R. Acland, "American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder" (Duke UP, 2020)
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture...
Elizabeth Catte, "Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia" (Belt, 2021)
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrib...
Alyson K. Spurgas, "Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity Into the Twenty-First Century" (Ohio State UP, 2020)
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century, (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), Alyson K. Spurgas, Ph.D. e...
Paul Davies, "The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humb...
Eben Kirksey, "The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans" (St. Martin's Press, 2020)
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans (St. Martin's Press, 2020), anthropologist Eben Kirksey visits the fronti...
Jeff Levin, "Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity's Two Greatest Institutions" (Oxford UP, 2020)
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though the current political climate might lead one to suspect that religion and medicine make for uncomfortable bedfellows, the two institutions have...
Alicia Puglionesi, "Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science" (Stanford UP, 2020)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skepti...
S. L. Lewis and M. A. Maslin, "The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene" (Yale UP, 2018)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics--the old forces of nature--have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new ...
Richard Ovenden, "Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge" (Harvard UP, 2020)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Living in an age awash with information can sometimes obscure its extraordinary fragility. Indeed, as Richard Ovenden demonstrates in Burning the Boo...
Christopher M. Kelty, "The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, a...
Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without ...
Jeremy Black, "Tank Warfare" (Indiana UP, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the battlefield in the 20th century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of ...
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "Medieval Meteorology: Forecasting the Weather from Aristotle to the Almanac" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we speak to Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor of History at the University of Reading about her new book Medieval Meteorology: Foreca...
Trevor Pearce, "Pragmatism's Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the...
Jose Sanchez, "Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms" (Routledge, 2020)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms (Routledge, 2020) dives into an analysis of how the tectonics of a buildi...
Edward Wilson-Lee, "The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library" (Scribner, 2019)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Wilson-Lee's book A Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library (Scr...
Andrea Ballestero, "A Future History of Water" (Duke UP, 2019)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are joined by Dr. Andrea Ballestero, associate Professor of Anthropology and Director Ethnography Studio, at Rice University. We will be talking ab...
Erica Fretwell, "Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling" (Duke UP, 2020)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and ...
Gemma Milne, "Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It" (Robinson, 2021)
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bombastic headlines about science and technology are nothing new. To cut through the constant stream of information and misinformation on social media...
Virginia Postrel, "The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World" (Basic Books, 2020)
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World (Basic Books, 2020), Virginia Postrel describes how humans coevolved with textiles. The s...
O. Carter Snead, "What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics" (Harvard UP, 2020)
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At first glance, the term “expressive individualism” seems benign enough. After all, people throughout the Western world value their personal free...
Colleen Plumb, "Thirty Times a Minute" (Radius Books, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Captive elephants exhibit what biologists refer to as stereotypy, which includes rhythmic rocking, head bobbing, stepping back and forth, and pacing. ...
Abigail A. Dumes, "Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine" (Duke UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While many doctors claim that Lyme disease--a tick-borne bacterial infection--is easily diagnosed and treated, other doctors and the patients they car...
Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, "Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It" (FSG Originals, 2020)
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (FSG Originals, 2020), the celebrated writers and Logic cofound...
James D. Stein, "The Fate of Schrodinger's Cat: Using Math and Computers to Explore the Counterintuitive" (World Scientific, 2020)
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Can we correctly predict the flip of a fair coin more than half the time -- or the decay of a single radioactive atom? Our intuition, based on a lifet...
Nicolas Petit, "Big Tech and the Digital Economy: The Moligopoly Scenario" (Oxford UP, 2020)
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Consumers may love their products and services but, among politicians and activists, the big-technology companies are fast developing a reputation as ...
A. Espay and B. Stecher, "Brain Fables: The Hidden History of Neurodegenerative Diseases and a Blueprint to Conquer Them" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
An estimated 80 million people live with a neurodegenerative disease, with this number expected to double by 2050. Despite decades of research and bil...
Peter Singer, "Why Vegan?: Eating Ethically" (Liveright, 2020)
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before the publication of his seminal Animal Liberation in 1975, Peter Singer, one of the greatest moral philosophers of our time, unflinchingl...
Richard Seymour, "The Twittering Machine" (Verso, 2020)
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. ...
Nancy D. Campbell, "OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose" (MIT Press, 2020)
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Reducing harm or shrinking the likelihood of accidental death are remarkably contentions projects—in areas from sex education, to pandemic managemen...
Harmony Bench, "Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Harmony Bench's Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common (Minnesota UP, 2020) traces the changing ways dance is distributed and cre...
Glenn Sauer, "Points of Contact: Science, Religion, and the Search for Truth" (Orbis Books, 2020)
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As a scientist and practicing Catholic, Dr. Sauer brings a unique perspective to several of the important issues related to finding a space for dialog...
Anna Weltman, "Supermath: The Power of Numbers for Good and Evil" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mathematics as a subject is distinctive in its symbolic abstraction and its potential for logical and computational rigor. But mathematicians tend to ...
Jeremy Snyder, "Exploiting Hope: How the Promise of New Medical Interventions Sustains Us--and Makes Us Vulnerable" (Oxford UP, 2020)
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We often hear stories of people in terrible and seemingly intractable situations who are preyed upon by someone offering promises of help. Frequently ...
Jinee Lokaneeta, "The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by ...
Matthew H. Rafalow, "Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Matt Rafalow, about his book, Digital Divisions: How Schools Create Inequality in the Tech Era (University of Chicago...
Ray Ison, "Systems Practice: How to Act In Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity in a Climate-Change World" (Springer, 2017)
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While various systems theories have received rigorous treatments across the literature of the field, reliable and robust advice for systems practic...
Xiaowei Wang, "Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside" (FSG Originals, 2020)
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most of our discussions about how “technology will change the world” focus on the global cities that drive the world economy. Even when we talk ab...
Amalia Leguizamón, "Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina" (Duke UP, 2020)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1996 Argentina adopted genetically modified (GM) soybeans as a central part of its national development strategy. Today, Argentina is the third lar...
Soraya de Chadarevian, "Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“What are chromosomes? And what does it mean to treat them as visual objects?” asks Soraya de Chadarevian in her new book, Heredity Under the M...
Rosamond Rhodes, "The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Common morality has been the touchstone of medical ethics since the publication of Beauchamp and Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics in 1979...
Dale Kedwards, "The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland" (D. S. Brewer, 2020)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Icelandic mappae mundi were a series of maps produced in the late medieval period (c. 1225 - c. 1400) that bore witness to fundamental changes in ...
K. C. Smith and C. Mariscal, "Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology (Oxford University Press, 2020) focuses on the emerging scientific discipline of astrobiology, exploring...
Marisa Anne Bass, "Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt" (Princeton UP, 2019)
17 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton UP, 2019) Marissa Anne Bass explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dut...
Sharon T. Strocchia, "Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy" (Harvard UP, 2019)
17 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Sharon Strocchia, Professor of History at Emory University. She is the author of Deat...
Jimena Canales, "Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science" (Princeton UP, 2020)
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the en...