New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
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...
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....