New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Daniel Deudney, "Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2020)
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Space is again in the headlines. E-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are planning to colonize Mars. The Trump Administration has created a "Space ...
Laura DeNardis, "The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch" (Yale UP, 2020)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most people recognize that the internet is growing at an exponential rate. But few have thought as deeply as Laura DeNardis, a Professor and Interim D...
C. Thi Nguyen, "Games: Agency as Art" (Oxford UP, 2020)
10 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Monopoly, Solitaire, football and Minecraft are all games, but for C. Thi Nyugen they are also an art form – specifically, the art form of agency, o...
Jamie Merisotis, "Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines" (RosettaBooks, 2020)
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Are robots going to be our overlords? In Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines (RosettaBooks, 2020), Jamie Merisotis says they don't have to be. We ...
Eric Rutkow, "The Longest Line on the Map The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas" (Scribner, 2019)
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his book The Longest Line on the Map The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas (Scribner, 2019), Professor Er...
John Durham Peters, "Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sergey Brin, a cofounder of Google, once compared the perfect search engine to “the mind of God.” As the modern face of promiscuous knowledge, how...
Anthony Hodgson, "Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World" (Part 2) (Routledge, 2020)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second episode of a two-part conversation with Hodgson, and in it we pick up our conversation on anticipatory systems and the role they pl...
Andrew Liu, "Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India" (Yale UP, 2020)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. It is beloved by consumers in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and it comes in...
M. Bekoff and J. Pierce, "The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age" (Beacon Press, 2017)
03 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A compelling argument that the time has come to use what we know about the fascinating and diverse inner lives of other animals on their behalf Every ...
I. Newkirk and G. Stone, "Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life and offer tools for living mor...
Micha Rahder, "An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love, and Technoscience in Guatemalan Forest Conservation" (Duke UP, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are joined today by Dr. Micha Rahder, writer, editor, and independent scholar based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We will be talking about her ...
S. Myers and H. Frumkin, "Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves" (Island Press, 2020)
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves (Island Press, 2020), Dr. Samuel Myers and his co-authors illustrate the interconnecte...
Doug Specht, "Mapping Crisis: Participation, Datafication and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping" (U London Press, 2020)
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The digital age has thrown questions of representation, participation and humanitarianism back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms and big da...
M. Newhart and W. Dolphin, "The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience" (Routledge, 2018)
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Medical marijuana laws have spread across the U.S. to all but a handful of states. Yet, eighty years of social stigma and federal prohibition creates...
Michael E. McCullough, "The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code" (Basic Books, 2020)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why Give a Damn About Strangers? In his book The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code (Basic Books, 2020), Michael E. Mc...
Li Zhang, "Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy" (U California Press, 2020)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced wit...
D. Bilak and T. Nummedal, "Furnace and Fugue. A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s 'Atalanta fugiens' (1618)" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1618, on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, the German alchemist and physician Michael Maier published Atalanta fugiens, an intriguing and complex...
Dan Royles, "To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS" (UNC Press, 2020)
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight ...
Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What if outer space is not outside the human environment but, rather, defines it? This is the unusual starting point of Valerie Olson’s Into the Ext...
Kristina M. Lyons, "Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life Politics" (Duke UP, 2020)
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Colombia, decades of social and armed conflict and the US-led war on drugs have created a seemingly untenable situation for scientists and rural co...
Rene Almeling, "GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health" (U California Press, 2020)
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rene Almeling’s new book GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health (University of California Press, 2020) provides an in-dep...
Scholarly Communication: An Interview with Joerg Heber of PLOS
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Open Access is spelled with a capital O and a capital A at the Public Library of Science (or PLOS, for short), a nonprofit Open Access publisher. Amon...
Ernest Freeberg, "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement" (Basic Books, 2020)
13 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial ci...
Boel Berner, "Strange Blood: The Rise and Fall of Lamb Blood Transfusion in 19th-Century Medicine and Beyond" (Transcript Verlag, 2020)
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-1870s, the experimental therapy of lamb blood transfusion spread like an epidemic across Europe and the USA. Doctors tried it as a cure for...
Margaret Heffernan, "Uncharted: How to Map and Navigate the Future Together" (Simon and Schuster, 2020)
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Dr Margaret Heffernan about her latest book, Uncharted: How to Map and Navigate the Future Together (Simon and Schuster, 2020). Mar...
John Whysner, "The Alchemy of Disease" (Columbia UP, 2020)
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have unleashed a bewildering number of potentially harmful chemicals. But out of this vast array, how do we i...
Daniel Macfarlane, "Fixing Niagara Falls: Environment, Energy, and Engineers at the World’s Most Famous Waterfall" (UBC Press, 2020)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Water and diplomatic historian Dan MacFarlane has written a fascinating book on a fundamental debate in environmental history: What is a natural lands...
Arleen Tuchman, "Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease" (Yale UP, 2020)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale University Press, 2020), Arleen Tuchman, professor of history at Vanderbilt University, ...
Eric Weiner, "The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Places" (Simon and Schuster, 2016)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Living, as we do, in a time in which a U.S. president anoints himself “a very stable genius”, we are particularly appreciative of Eric Weiner, a f...
Anthony Hodgson, "Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World: A Search for New Perspectives" (Routledge, 2020)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the view of Anthony Hodgson, fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, ...
Jeremy England, "Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things" (Basic Books, 2020)
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“How did life begin? Most things in the universe aren't alive, and yet if you trace the evolutionary history of plants and animals back far enough, ...
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...