New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Kory Olson, "The Cartographic Capital: Mapping Third Republic Paris" (Liverpool UP, 2018)
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When is the last time you looked at/consulted a paper map? Perhaps you have one hanging on a wall at home or work, framed or not. Or maybe you have so...
Paul Harkins, "Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies" (Routledge, 2019)
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does technology shape music? In Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies (Routledge, 2019), Paul Harkins, a lecturer in music a...
Robert Sroufe et al, "The Power of Existing Buildings" (Island Press, 2019)
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your building has the potential to change the world. Existing buildings consume approximately 40 percent of the energy and emit nearly half of the car...
John R. Gallagher, "Update Culture and the Afterlife of Writing" (Utah State UP, 2020)
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, Lee Pierce (she/they interviews John R. Gallagher of University of Illinois about Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing...
Ayala Fader, "Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age" (Princeton UP, 2020)
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever...
Laurence Monnais, "The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Situated at the crossroads between the history of colonialism, of modern Southeast Asia, and of medical pluralism, this history of medicine and health...
Andre Brock, "Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures" (NYU Press, 2020)
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Technology has been instrumental in allowing audiences to encounter expressions of culture to which they may have no direct connection. The popular co...
Lee Vinsel, "Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cars are among our most ubiquitous technologies; one could say that the cultural lore of the postwar United States is written in tire marks. But as mu...
Patrick M. Condon, "Five Rules for Tomorrow’s Cities" (Island Press, 2020)
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How we design our cities over the next four decades will be critical for our planet. If we continue to spill excessive greenhouse gas into the atmosph...
Jathan Sadowski, "Too Smart" (MIT Press, 2020)
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The ubiquity of technology that collects massive volumes of all kinds of data lends itself to one overarching question: “What?” As in what is the ...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. B...
Wade Roush, "Extraterrestrials" (MIT Press, 2020)
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Everything we know about how planets form and how life arises suggests that human civilization on Earth should not be unique. We ought to see abundant...
A. B. Chastain and T. W. Lorek, "Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Emerging out of a 2016 conference, Andra Chastain and Timothy Lorek have brought together Environmental History, Latin American Studies, and Science a...
Lloyd B. Minor, "Discovering Precision Health" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today's guest is scientist, surgeon, and dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Lloyd B. Minor. Previously he served as provost and s...
Jodi Hilty, "Corridor Ecology: Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation" (Island Press, 2019)
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Corridor Ecology: Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation, 2nd Edition (Island Press, 2019), Dr. Jodi Hilty and her...
Wenfei Tong, "Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds" (Princeton UP, 2020)
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Wenfei Tong's Bird Love: The Family Life of Birds (Princeton University Press, 2020) looks at the extraordinary range of mating systems in the avian w...
Carlo Caduff, "The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger" (U California Press, 2015)
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Carlo Caduff’s The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger (University of California Press, 2015) is an ethnographic inquiry...
Thor Magnusson, "Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Thor Magnusson—musician, Professor of Fut...
Theodora Varbouli and Olga Touloumi, "Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground" (Routledge, 2019)
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Weaving together intellectual, social, cultural, and material histories, Theodora Varbouli and Olga Touloumi's book Computer Architectures: Constructi...
Brian A. Stauffer, "Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion" (U New Mexico Press, 2019)
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Victory on Earth or in Heaven: Mexico’s Religionero Rebellion (University of New Mexico Press, 2019), Brian A. Stauffer reconstructs the history ...
Amy Koerber, “From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History" (Penn State UP, 2018)
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in Language, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews Dr. Amy Koerber (she/hers), Professor at Texas Tech University, on the ...
Paul Nahin, "Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons" (Princeton UP, 2020)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable (Princeton University Press, 2020...
Arthur Asseraf, "Electric News in Colonial Algeria" (Oxford UP, 2019)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from...
Owen Whooley, "On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Psychiatry has always aimed to peer deep into the human mind, daring to cast light on its darkest corners and untangle its thorniest knots, often invo...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat....
Adrian Currie, "Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences" (MIT Press, 2018)
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep p...
Neil Selwyn, "What is Digital Sociology?" (Polity, 2019)
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The rise of digital technology is transforming the world in which we live. Our digitalized societies demand new ways of thinking about the social, and...
Margaret E. Roberts, "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall" (Princeton UP, 2020)
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’...
Joseph Reagle, "Hacking Life: Systematized Living and its Discontents" (MIT Press, 2019)
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tip...
Maurice Finocchiaro, "On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair" (Oxford UP, 2019)
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book On Trial for Reason: Science, Religion, and Culture in the Galileo Affair (Oxford University Press, 2019), Maurice Finocchiaro shows t...
Tweeting the Word of God: Evangelism from a "Digital Pulpit"
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Technological advancement through the 20th century has allowed religious leaders to broaden their reach, first through print, then televangelism, and ...
Great Books: Julie Carlson on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet. The novel spawned two centur...
Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, "Übermensch: Plädoyer Für Einen Nietzscheanischen Transhumanismus" (Schwabe, 2019)
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I talk Stefan Lorenz Sorgner. Stefan teaches philosophy at John Cabot University in Rome. He is director and co-founder of the Beyond ...
Melissa Kravetz, "Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics and Professional Identity" (U Toronto Press, 2019)
17 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics and Professional Identity (University of Toronto Press, 2019), Meliss...
Nancy Appelbaum, "Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia" (UNC Press, 2016)
13 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Chorographic Commission of Colombia, an ambitious geographical expedition, set out to define and map a nascent and ...
Jacob Turner, "Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Jacob Turner explains why AI is unique, what legal and eth...
Adrian Wisnicki, "Fieldwork of Empire, 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature" (Routledge, 2019)
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adrian Wisnicki talks about the British expeditionary literature of the late 1800s. Reading between the lines of Victorian travel accounts, Wisnicki s...
Jerome Whitington, "Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower" (Cornell UP, 2018)
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jerome Whitington's Anthropogenic Rivers: The Production of Uncertainty in Lao Hydropower (Cornell University Press, 2019) examines the dynamics and d...
Kate Devlin, "Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots" (Bloomsbury, 2018)
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the ancient Greeks to twenty-first century movies, robots i...
Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "Data Feminism" (MIT Press, 2020)
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The increased datafication our interactions and permeation of data science into more aspects of our lives requires analysis of the systems of power su...
Michael Rechtenwald, "Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom" (New English Review, 2019)
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his book about enormous sea changes brought about by digital technology, Michael Rectenwald begins and ends his Google Archipelago: The Digital Gul...
David J. Gunkel, "Robot Rights" (MIT Press, 2018)
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are in the midst of a robot invasion, as devices of different configurations and capabilities slowly but surely come to take up increasingly import...
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
25 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Philli...
Sarah Fawn Montgomery, "Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir" (Mad Creek Books, 2018)
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you live in America, chances are good you’ve heard the term “mental health crisis” bandied about in the media. While true that anxiety, depre...
Amy Shira Teitel, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight Before NASA" (Bloomsbury, 2016)
21 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amy Shira Teitel talks about Apollo and the community of people who are deeply attached to space history. Teitel is a spaceflight historian and the cr...
Angela Jones, "Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry" (NYU Press, 2020)
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Camming: Money, Power, and Pleasure in the Sex Work Industry (NYU Press, 2020), Dr. Angela Jones engages readers in a five-year mixed...
Alistair Sponsel, "Darwin’s Evolving Identity: Adventure, Ambition, and the Sin of Speculation" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Alistair Sponsel talks about Darwin’s experiences on HMS Beagle and his early career as a naturalist. His close reading of Darwin’s journals a...
Francesca Minerva, "The Ethics of Cryonics: Is It Immoral to be Immortal" (Palgrave, 2018)
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Cryonics―also known as cryopreservation or cryosuspension―is the preservation of legally dead individuals at ultra-low temperatures. Those who und...
Germaine R. Halegoua, "The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place" (NYU Press, 2019)
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place (NYU Press, 2019), Germaine R. Halegoua rethinks everyday interactions tha...
Gil Eyal, "The Crisis of Expertise" (Polity, 2019)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typi...
Michael F. Robinson, "The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2006)
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Radio host Kevin Fox interviews Michael F. Robinson about the history of American Arctic exploration, the subject of his book, The Coldest Crucible: A...
Shannon Vallor, "Technology and the Virtues" (Oxford UP, 2016)
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 21st century offers a dizzying array of new technological developments: robots smart enough to take white collar jobs, social media tools that man...
Kyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music" (MIT Press, 2019)
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What is the human and environmental cost of music? In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019),Kyle Devine, an Associate Professor...
Russell A. Newman, "The Paradoxes of Network Neutralities" (MIT Press, 2019)
03 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Three years after the withdrawal of the Open Internet Order – then-President Barack Obama’s attempt at codifying network neutrality by prohibiting...
Catherine Newell, "Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017)
31 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Newell talks about the religious roots of the final frontier, focusing on the collaboration of artist Chesley Bonestell, science writer Will...
Allison Ochs, "Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?" (Amsterdam UP, 2019)
31 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new books, Would I Have Sexted Back in the 80s?: A Modern Guide to Parenting Digital Teens, Derived from Lessons of the Past (Amsterdam Univers...
Alexis Elder, "Friendship, Robots, and Social Media: False Friends and Second Selves" (Routledge, 2017)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Various emerging technologies, from social robotics to social media, appeal to our desire for social interactions, while avoiding some of the risks an...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Christopher J. Phillips, "Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know About Baseball" (Princeton UP, 2019)
29 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The so-called Sabermetrics revolution in baseball that began in the 1970s, popularized by the book—and later Hollywood film—Moneyball, was suppose...
Neil Maher, "Apollo in the Age of Aquarius" (Harvard UP, 2017)
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Maher talks about the social forces that shaped NASA in the 1960s and 70s, connecting the space race with the radical upheavals of the countercul...
Nancy D. Campbell, "OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose" (MIT Press, 2020)
24 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys―an ugly death awaitin...
Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger, "Re-Engineering Humanity" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have...
Safi Bahcall, "Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries" (St. Martins, 2019)
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Safi Bahcall's Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (St. Martin's Press, 2019) reveals a s...
J. L. Anderson, "Capitalist Pigs: Pigs, Pork, and Power in America" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
21 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this this interview, Dr. Carrie Tippen talks with J. L. Anderson about the 2019 book Capitalist Pigs: Pigs, Pork, and Power in America published by...
Ben Green, "The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future" (MIT Press, 2019)
20 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The “smart city,” presented as the ideal, efficient, and effective for meting out services, has capture the imaginations of policymakers, scholars...
Daniel Kennefick, "No Shadow of Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity" (Princeton UP, 2019)
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Kennefick talks about resistance to relativity theory in the early twentieth century and the huge challenges that faced British astronomers who...
James Schwartz, "The Ethics of Space Exploration" (Springer, 2016)
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Ethics of Space Exploration (Springer, 2016), edited by James S. J. Schwartz and Tony Milligan, aims to contribute significantly to the understand...
Jessica Lynne Pearson, "The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France and the United Nations in Postwar Africa" (Harvard UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
International organizations throw up several obstacles—their immense scale, their dry bureaucratic language—to the historian trying to piece toget...
Rachel Louise Moran, "Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique" (U Penn Press, 2018)
14 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did the modern, American body come into being? According to Rachel Louise Moran this is a story to be told through the lens of the advisory state....
Alice Hill, "Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption" (Oxford UP, 2019)
10 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Climate change impacts-more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms-have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world c...
Neil McArthur, "Robot Sex: Social and Ethical Implications" (MIT Press, 2017)
09 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sexbots are coming. Given the pace of technological advances, it is inevitable that realistic robots specifically designed for people's sexual gratifi...
Robert Rozehnal, "Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience" (OneWorld, 2019)
08 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when the digital world meets Sufism? This is the question raised in the exciting new book Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the America...
Lydia Barnett, "After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
08 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many centuries before the emergence of the scientific consensus on climate change, people began to imagine the existence of a global environment: a na...
Raj Patel, "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things" (U California Press, 2017)
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to prod...
Leor Halevi, "Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935" (Columbia UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did Muslims respond to foreign goods in an age characterized by global exchange and European imperial expansion? What sort of legal reasoning did ...
Joe Miller, "US of AA: How the Twelve Steps Hijacked the Science of Alcoholism" (Chicago Review Press, 2019)
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of Prohibition, America’s top scientists joined forces with members of a new group, called Alcoholics Anonymous, and put their clou...
Matthew D. O'Hara, "The History of the Future in Colonial Mexico" (Yale UP, 2018)
06 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Latin America – especially colonial Latin America – is not particularly known for futurism. For popular audiences, the region’s history likely ...
Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, "Nature, Empire, And Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World" (Stanford UP, 2006)
03 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1500s, the mines of Potosí –a mountain in southern Bolivia — produced 60% of the world’s silver. It was a place of great wealth and...
Susan Schulten, "A History of American in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press 2018)
03 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book A History of American in 100 Maps (University of Chicago Press 2018), historian Susan Schulten uses maps to explore five centuries of ...
John Danaher, "Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work" (Harvard UP, 2019)
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The future is a constant focus of anxiety, and we are all familiar with the pressures that come distinctively from automation – the transformation b...
E. Wakild and M. K. Berry, "A Primer for Teaching Environmental History: Ten Design Principles" (Duke UP, 2018)
31 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Wakild and Michelle K. Berry have written a practical, informative, and inspiring guide to teaching environmental history. It also happens to be...
Joshua Specht, "Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why do Americans eat so much beef? In Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (Princeton University Press, 2019), the h...
M. Schneider-Mayerson and B. R. Bellamy, "An Ecotopian Lexicon" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By choice or not, the catastrophes of global warming and mass extinction task young generations with reorienting human relationships with the earth’...
Ajantha Subramanian, "The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India" (Harvard UP, 2019)
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is merit? How is it claimed? In her much-awaited book The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard University Press, 2019), Ajanth...
Angelina Callahan, "NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Angelina Callahan talks about the Naval Research Laboratory’s Vanguard Project. While the launch of Vanguard 1 in 1958 was part of the Cold War “S...
Evan Friss, "On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City" (Columbia UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Evan Friss, an associate professor of history at James Madison University, historicizes the bicycle’s place in New York City’s social, economic, i...
Benjamin Breen, "The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade" (U Penn Press, 2019)
26 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), we are transported back to a t...
Darius Sollohub, "Millennials in Architecture: Generations, Disruption, and the Legacy of a Profession" (U Texas Press, 2019)
24 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Much has been written about Millennials, but until now their growing presence in the field of architecture has not been examined in depth. In an era o...
Xiao Liu, "Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
21 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such co...
Steve Fuller, "The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska's The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) debates the concept of tr...
Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...
Joshua Sperber, "Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace" (Lexington, 2019)
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Consumer Management in the Internet Age: How Customers Became Managers in the Modern Workplace (Lexington Books, 2019), Joshua Sperber analyzes on...
Laura Cabrera, "Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Laura Cabrera discusses three possible human...
Thomas Yarrow, "Architects: Portraits of a Practice" (Cornell UP, 2019)
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction an...
E. Jones-Imhotep and T. Adcock, "Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History" (UBC Press, 2018)
10 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Science and technology have shaped not only economic empires and industrial landscapes, but also the identities, anxieties, and understandings of peop...
Audrey Kurth Cronin, "Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists" (Oxford UP, 2019)
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. The diffusion of modern technology (robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems,...
Chet Van Duzer, "Martin Waldseemüller’s 'Carta marina' of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends" (Springer, 2019)
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chet Van Duzer's new book Martin Waldseemüller’s 'Carta marina' of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends (Springer, 2019), presents the...
Michael R. Boswell, "Climate Action Planning: A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities" (Island Press, 2019)
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Climate Action Planning: A Guide to Creating Low-Carbon, Resilient Communities (Island Press, 2019) is designed to help planners, municipal staff and ...
Jason Smith, "To Master the Boundless Sea: The US Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire" (UNC Press, 2018)
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Smith discusses the US Navy’s role in exploring and charting the ocean world. Smith is an assistant professor of history at Southern Connectic...
Deborah Lupton, "The Quantified Self" (Polity, 2016)
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains...