New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Thom van Dooren, "The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds" (Columbia UP, 2019)
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Crows can be found almost everywhere that people are, from tropical islands to deserts and arctic forests, from densely populated cities to suburbs an...
Robert M. Geraci, "Temples of Modernity: Nationalism, Hinduism, and Transhumanism in South Indian Science" (Lexington, 2018)
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between science, religion and technology in Hinduism? We speak with Robert M. Geraci about his research into religious ideas ...
Yves Citton, "Mediarchy" (Polity Press, 2019)
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences s...
James L. Nolan, Jr., "Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age" (Harvard UP, 2020)
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After his father died, James L. Nolan, Jr., took possession of a box of private family materials. To his surprise, the small secret archive contained...
Durba Mitra, "Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought" (Princeton UP, 2020)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, eth...
Robert Kolker, "Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of An American Family" (Doubleday, 2020)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden Valley Road: Inside The Mind of An American Family (Doubleday, 2020) is the story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of ...
Joseph E. Davis, "Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have ...
Zachary Dorner, "Merchants of Medicine: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long 18th Century" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Merchants of Medicine: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century (The University of Chicago Press), medicines embo...
Carl Safina, "Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace" (Henry Holt, 2020)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Some people insist that culture is strictly a human accomplishment. What are those people afraid of? Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families...
Nick Chater, "The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain" (Yale UP, 2019)
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “s...
Angèle Christin, "Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms" (Princeton UP, 2020)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle ...
Gerald Posner, "Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is investigative journalist and author, Gerald Posner. His new book, Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (Simon and Schu...
Jessica Pierce, "Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets" (U Chicago Press, 2016)
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them wit...
S. J. Potter, "Wireless Internationalism and Distant Listening: Britain, Propaganda, and the Invention of Global Radio, 1920-1939" (Oxford UP, 2020)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of the First World War, many people sought to use the new mass medium of radio as a tool for world peace, believing that it could pro...
David Haig, "From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life" (MIT Press, 2020)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life (MIT Press), evolutionary biologist David Haig explains ho...
Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, "NeuroScience Fiction" (Benbella Books, 2020)
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In NeuroScience Fiction (Benbella Books, 2020), Rodrigo Quian Quiroga shows how the outlandish premises of many seminal science fiction movies are be...
Emily Anthes, "The Great Indoors" (Scientific American, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Modern humans are an indoor species. We spend 90 percent of our time inside, shuttling between homes and offices, schools and stores, restaurants and ...
Sandra Young, "The Early Modern Global South in Print: Textual Form and the Production of Human Difference as Knowledge" (Routledge, 2015)
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Early modern geographers and compilers of travel narratives drew on a lexicon derived from cartography’s seemingly unchanging coordinates to explain...
David J. Hand, "Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters" (Princeton UP, 2020)
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There is no shortage of books on the growing impact of data collection and analysis on our societies, our cultures, and our everyday lives. David Hand...
Paul Offit, "Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far" (HarperCollins, 2020)
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why Do Unnecessary and Often Counter-Productive Medical Interventions Happen So Often? Today I talked to Paul Offit about his book Overkill: When Mod...
M. del Pilar Blanco and J. Page, "Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America" (U Florida Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (University of Florida Press 2020), a collection edited by María del Pilar Blanco...
Mary Augusta Brazelton, "Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China" (Cornell UP, 2019)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Ma...
Scott Soames, "The World Philosophy Made: From Plato to the Digital Age" (Princeton UP, 2019)
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How has philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live in? Philosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing ne...
Nick Morgan, "Can You Hear Me? How to Connect with People in a Virtual World" (HBRP, 2018)
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How is communicating virtually Is like eating Pringles forever? Find out as I talk to Nick Morgan about his new book Can You Hear Me? How to Connect w...
Steven Shapin, "The Scientific Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“There was no such thing as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it.” With this provocative and apparently paradoxical claim, Steve...
Amelia Moore, "Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in The Bahamas" (U California Press, 2019)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Despite being a minor contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, like many other small island nations, The Bahamas’s ecology and society are es...
David Moon, "The American Steppes: The Unexpected Russian Roots of Great Plains Agriculture, 1870s-1930s" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 1870s, migrant groups from Russia's steppes settled in the similar environment of the Great Plains. Many were Mennonites. They brough...
J. Kim and E. Maloney, "Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education and The Low-Density University" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Despite stereotypes of colleges and universities still stuck in the age of the blackboard and sage-on-stage lectures, a quiet revolution has been taki...
Khary O. Polk, "Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948" (UNC Press, 2020)
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Khary Oronde Polk is the author of Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948, published by the ...
C. Besteman and H. Gusterson, "Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How can we understand computerization as a social process? Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World (University of Chicago Press, ...
Katie Day Good, "Bring the World to the Child: Technologies of Global Citizenship in American Education" (MIT Press, 2020)
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, boosters of digital educational technologies emphasized that these platforms are vital tools for cultivating global...
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, "The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2020)
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (MIT Press), by Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, demonstrates that this technology – which is ...
Maile Arvin, "Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai‘i and Oceania" (Duke UP, 2020)
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From their earliest encounters with Indigenous Pacific Islanders, white Europeans and Americans saw Polynesians as almost racially white, and speculat...
Mack Hagood, "Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control" (Duke UP, 2019)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How have we used twentieth- and twenty-first-century sound technologies to carve out sonic space out of the hustle and bustle of contemporary life? In...
Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,...
Jeffrey J. Kripal, "The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge" (Bellevue Literary Press, 2019)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A “flip,” writes Jeffrey J. Kripal, is “a reversal of perspective,” “a new real,” often born of an extreme, life-changing experience. The ...
Nadia Eghbal, "Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software" (Stripe Press, 2020)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Open source is the once-radical idea that code should be freely available to everyone. Open-source software was once an optimistic model for public co...
Emily Pawley, "The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically sep...
Danielle Giffort, "Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the Quest for Medical Legitimacy" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for ...
Stuart Ritchie, "Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype in Science" (Penguin Books, 2020)
10 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
So much relies on science. But what if science itself can’t be relied on? In Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype in Science...
Tanya Kant, "Making it Personal: Algorithmic Personalization, Identity, and Everyday Life" (Oxford UP, 2020)
07 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How are algorithms shaping our experience of the internet? In Making it Personal: Algorithmic Personalization, Identity, and Everyday Life (Oxford Uni...
Orit Kamir, "Betraying Dignity" (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2019)
07 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What do medieval knights, suicide bombers and "victimhood culture" have in common? Betraying Dignity: The Toxic Seduction of Social Media, Shaming, an...
J. Browning and T. Silver, "An Environmental History of the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' re...
Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding o...
Alex Sayf Cummings, "Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy" (Columbia UP, 2020)
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage ec...
Anton Howes, "Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2020)
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past 300 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way ima...
Melissa J. Wilde, "Birth Control Battles: How Race and Class Divided American Religion" (U California Press, 2020)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although it has largely been erased from the collective memory of American Christianity, the debate over eugenics was a major factor in the history of...
Mari K. Webel, "The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In The Politics of Disease Control. Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Mari K. Webel tells a history of col...
Charlton D. McIlwain, "Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter" (Oxford UP, 2020)
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford Univeristy Press), Charlton McIlwain, Vice Provost for ...
Olivia Weisser, "ll Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England" (Yale UP, 2015)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Olivia Weisser, Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts – B...
Sarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surg...
T. Paulus and A. Wise, "Looking for Insight, Transformation, and Learning in Online Talk " (Routledge, 2019)
30 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Trena Paulus of Eastern Tennessee State University and Dr. Alyssa Wise of New York University on their new book, Loo...
Paulo Drinot, "The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paulo Drinot’s The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s-1950s (Cambridge University Press, 2020), studies the interplay of se...
Solomon Goldstein-Rose, "The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change" (Melville House, 2020)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At age 26, Solomon Goldstein-Rose has already spent more time thinking about climate change than most of us will in our lifetimes. He’s been a clima...
Philip Butler, "Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his book Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Technology and Spirituality (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Philip Butler explores what might happen if...
Andrew Kettler, "The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Andrew Kettler charts the impac...
Sasha Costanza-Chock, "Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need" (MIT Press, 2020)
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (MIT Press, 2020), Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of Civic Media...
Sandra Postel, "Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity" (Island Press, 2020)
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity (Island Press), Sandra Postel acknowledges society’s past mishaps with managing water ...
Marc Zimmer, "The State of Science" (Prometheus Books, 2020)
21 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
New research and innovations in the field of science are leading to life-changing and world-altering discoveries like never before. What does the hori...
Will Rollason, "Motorbike People: Power and Politics on Rwandan Streets" (Lexington Books, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Will Rollason is senior lecturer of anthropology at Brunel University London. He’s written a fascinating book titled Motorbike People: Power and Pol...
Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate ...
Philip Reid, "The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600-1800" (Brill, 2020)
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
To the average landlubber, the merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1800 seem little different from their counterparts two centuries befo...
Mark Anderson, "From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology" (Stanford UP, 2019)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Anderson’s From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism and American Anthropology (Stanford University Press) is at once a story about US anthr...
Eugenia Lean, "Vernacular Industrialism in China"(Columbia UP, 2020)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, ...
Luz María Hernández Sáenz, "Carving a Niche: The Medical Profession in Mexico 1800-1870" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018)
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Carving a Niche: The Medical Profession in Mexico 1800-1870 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), Luz María Hernández Sáenz follows the tra...
Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
15 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its D...
Fay Bound Alberti, "A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
14 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the global pandemic of Covid-19 arrived, public health experts in the U.S. and U.K. were warning of the epidemic of loneliness. Loneliness stea...
David Kaiser, "Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Kaiser is a truly unique scholar: he is simultaneously a physics researcher and a historian of science whose writing beautifully melds the past ...
Lizzie O’Shea, "Future Histories" (Verso, 2019)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we talk about technology we always talk about the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories: What Ada Love...
Philip M. Plotch, "Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City" (Cornell UP, 2020)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since New York City built one of the world’s great subway systems, no promise has been more tantalizing than the proposal to build a new subway...
Matto Mildenberger, "Carbon Captured: How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics" (MIT Press, 2020)
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some countries pass legislation regulating carbon or protecting the environment while others do not? In his new book Carbon Captured: How Busin...
P. W. Singer and A. Cole, "Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution" (HMH, 2020)
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In P. W. Singer and August Cole's groundbreaking book, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), an FBI agent...
Sabine Hildebrandt, "The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich" (Berghahn, 2017)
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Of the many medical specializations to transform themselves during the rise of National Socialism, anatomy has received relatively little attention fr...
Greg Mitchell, "The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (The New Press, 2020)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
dSoon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most impo...
Rachel Mundy, "Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts, and Evolutionary Listening" (Wesleyan UP, 2018)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“What makes song sparrows, Verdi, medieval monks, and minstrelsy part of the same taxonomy?” So asks—and answers—Rachel Mundy, who is Assistan...
Allison Bigelow, "Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World" (UNC Press 2020)
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historians of Latin America have long appreciated the central role of mining and metallurgy in the region. The Spanish Empire in particular was create...
Ruth Leys, "The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique" (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Ruth Leys (she/hers), Professor Emeritus of Johns Hopkins Universit...
Doron Galili, "Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television, 1878-1939" (Duke UP, 2020)
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the burst of new technologies in the 1870s, many inventors and visionaries believed that the transmission of moving images was just around the co...
He Bian, "Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China" (Princeton UP, 2020)
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
He Bian’s new book Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2020) is a beautiful cultural histor...
Eric Holthaus, "The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming" (HarperOne, 2020)
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We sit at the beginning of what could be “both a truly terrifying and a golden era in humanity.” In The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What’...
Ainissa Ramirez, "The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another" (MIT Press, 2020)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, I talk to Dr. Ainissa Ramirez about her new book, The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another (MIT Press, 2020...
Lee McIntyre, "The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience" (MIT Press, 2019)
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What can explain the success of science as an endeavor for getting closer to truth? Does science simply represent a successful methodology, or is it s...
Alejandra Bronfman, "Isles of Noise: Sonic Media in the Caribbean" (UNC Press, 2016)
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Caribbean has figuratively and literally been entangled in processes of global integration earlier than other parts of the Americas. In Isles of N...
Julia Obertreis, "Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860-1991" (V and R Unipress, 2017)
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Imperial Desert Dreams: Cotton Growing and Irrigation in Central Asia, 1860-1991 (V & R Unipress, 2017), Julia Obertreis explores the infrastructur...
Ashley E. Kerr, "Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina (1860-1910)" (Vanderbilt UP, 2020)
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Analyzing a wide variety of late-nineteenth-century sources, Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina (1860-1910) (Vanderbil...
Mariann Hardey, "The Culture of Women in Tech: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" (Emerald, 2019)
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the culture of the tech industry? In The Culture of Women in Tech: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Emerald, 2019), Mariann Hardey, an Associat...
Nathan G. Alexander, "Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850–1914" (NYU Press, 2019)
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is modern racism a product of secularization and the decline of Christian universalism? The debate has raged for decades, but up to now, the actual ra...
Henry M. Cowles, "The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey" (Harvard UP, 2020)
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of a single scientific method, shared across specialties and teachable to ten-year-olds, is just over a hundred years old. For centuries prio...
David R. Grimes, "The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are some of the prevalent ways in which we lie to ourselves and limit our flexibility? Today I discussed this and other questions with David R. ...
Jonathan Gelber, "Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow" (Skyhorse, 2019)
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Dr Jonathan Gelber, author of the book Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow: Injuries and Tragedies That Transformed C...
A Very Square Peg: A Podcast Series about Polymath Robert Eisler. Episode 1: Man into Wolf
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss how I discovered Robert Eisler’s Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy ...
Kurt Braddock, "Weaponized Words" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kurt Braddock's new book Weaponized Words: The Strategic Role of Persuasion in Violent Radicalization and Counter-Radicalization (Cambridge University...
Jay Timothy Dolmage, "Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race" (OSU Press, 2018)
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t) interviews Jay Timothy Dolmage of the University of Waterloo on the new book Disabled Upon ...
Sam Han, "(Inter)Facing Death: Life in Global Uncertainty" (Routledge, 2020)
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now reside...
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for S...
Donald Stevens, "Mexico in the Time of Cholera" (U New Mexico Press, 2019)
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Donald F. Stevens offers us a portrait of early republican life in his new book, Mexico in the Time of Cholera, published in 2019 by the University of...
Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’...
Elinor Carmi, "Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media" (Peter Lang, 2020)
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is spam? In Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media, Dr Elinor Carmi, a postdoctoral research asso...
Govind Gopakumar, "Installing Automobility: Emerging Politics of Mobility and Streets in Indian Cities" (MIT Press, 2020)
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Automobiles and their associated infrastructures, deeply embedded in Western cities, have become a rapidly growing presence in the mega-cities of the ...
Nick Prior, "Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society" (SAGE, 2018)
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Prior—Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Edinburgh—discusses his new book, Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society (S...