New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Lundy Braun, "Breathing Race into the Machine" (U Minnesota Press, 2014)
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“We cannot get answers to questions that cannot be asked.” Lundy Braun’s influential book, Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Caree...
Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
They were throwing garbage in the streets. Rosalind Fredericks makes sense of the garbage-scape of Dakar, Senegal in the wake of the 2007 trash “rev...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
John P. Davis, "Russia in the Time of Cholera" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of “backwardness” often plagues historical writing on Russia. In Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (Bloom...
Michael G. Vann, "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2018)
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A funny thing happened to historian Michael Vann* on the way to his PhD thesis. While he was doing his research on French colonialism and the urbanist...
Nir Eyal, "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A former advisor to tech companies on how to make their products habit-forming, Nir Eyal found that his own smartphone use was adversely affecting his...
Ruha Benjamin, "Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code" (Polity, 2019)
19 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White su...
Helen Rozwadowski, "Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans" (Reaktion Books, 2018)
15 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Helen Rozwadowski talks about the history of the oceans and how these oceans have shaped human history in profound ways. Rozwadowski is a professor of...
J. Yates and C. N. Murphy, "Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Standards are crucial to the way we live—just look around you. A no. 2 pencil, perhaps? That arrived in an 8x8.5x20 shipping container? Standards al...
Margaret E. Schotte, "Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the Age of Exploration, European maritime communities bent on colonial and commercial expansion embraced the complex mechanics of celestial...
Jonathan Rees, "Before the Refrigerator: How We Used to Get Ice" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Frederic Tudor was the “Ice King” of early nineteenth-century America. It was Tudor who realized that ice, harvested from New England ponds and ri...
Wendy Wickwire, "At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging" (UBC Press, 2019)
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The history of anthropology remembers James Teit as a field assistant and man-on-the spot for Franz Boas. But in At The Bridge: James Teit and an Anth...
Claire Edington, "Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam" (Cornell UP, 2019)
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Both colonies and insane asylums are well known institutions of power. But what of asylums in Europe’s early 20th-century colonial empires? How did ...
Michael E. Mann, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars : Dispatches from the Front Lines" (2012)
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We talk with Michael E. Mann, a Nobel Prize winner and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, about his journey through the cli...
Cara New Daggett, "Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work" (Duke UP, 2019)
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (Duke UP, 2019), Cara New Daggett suggests that reassessing our relationshi...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
Russell Potter, "Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-year Search" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2016)
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1845, two British naval ships left England with 129 men in search of the Northwest Passage. They were never heard from again. The disappearance of ...
Jamie L. Pietruska, "Looking Forward: Prediction and Uncertainty in Modern America" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
30 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A fortune teller, cotton prophet, and a weather forecaster walk into a bar—probably a more common occurrence than you might think in the Gilded Age ...
Jeremy Black, "Maps of War: Mapping Conflict through the Centuries" (Conway, 2016)
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
There is little documented mapping of conflict prior to the Renaissance period, but, from the 17th century onward, military commanders and strategists...
Andreas Bernard, "Theory of the Hashtag" (Polity, 2019)
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his short book, Theory of the Hashtag (Polity, 2019), Andreas Bernard traces the origins and career of the hashtag. Following the history of the # ...
Amy Carney, "Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS" (Toronto UP, 2018)
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From 1931 to 1945, leaders of the SS sought to transform their organization into a racially-elite family community that would serve as the Third Reich...
Ann Elias, "Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity" (Duke UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With the threats of sea water warming and ocean acidification, coral reefs have become both a fire alarm and a barometer for the dangers of human indu...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Binyamin Appelbaum, "The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society" (Little Brown, 2019)
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Think economics is the "dismal science" with abstract formulas that have no impact on life as it is actually lived? Think again. In The Economists' ...
Valerie Olson, "Into the Extreme: U.S. Environmental Systems and Politics Beyond Earth" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Valerie Olson talks about why the idea of outer space as a “frontier” is giving way to one that frames it as a cosmic ecosystem. Olson is an assoc...
David Lindsay Roberts, "Republic of Numbers: Unexpected Stories of Mathematical Americans through History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The institutional history of mathematics in the United States comprises several entangled traditions—military, civil, academic, industrial—each of...
Theodore Dalrymple, "False Positive: A Year of Error, Omission, and Political Correctness in the New England Journal of Medicine" (Encounter Books, 2019)
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Theodore Dalrymple is a retired physician in Great Britain, who has written an account of his year’s-worth of reading the New England Journal of Med...
David D. Vail, "Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945" (U Alabama Press, 2019)
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over fifty years ago, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) scolded the agricultural industry for its profligate spread of “poison” and pesticide...
Elizabeth DeLoughrey, "Allegories of the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
While the mainstream discourses on global warming characterize it as an unprecedented catastrophe that unites the globe in a common challenge, Elizabe...
Oren Harman, "Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World" (FSG, 2018)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“There are only two ways to live your life,” said Albert Einstein, “One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is ...
Thomas Hager, "Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine" (Abrams Press, 2019)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be a researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough te...
Lucas Richert, “Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs” (McGill-Queens UP, 2018)
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Strange Trips isn’t only the title of Dr. Lucas Richert’s new book; it’s also a good description of the journey substances take from the black m...
Michitake Aso, "Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975" (UNC Press, 2018)
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How can the history of rubber be used as a way to understand the history of 20th-century Vietnam? In this episode of New Books in History, Michael G. ...
Jennifer L. Derr, "The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2019)
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt's relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of histo...
David Sinclair, "LifeSpan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today's guest is David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Paul Glenn Center Biological Mechanisms of Agi...
Erika Milam, "Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America" (Princeton UP, 2019)
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Erika Milam talks about the scientific search for human nature, a project that captured the attention of paleontologists, anthropologists, and primato...
Timothy LeCain, "The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
30 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy LeCain is an award-winning environmental historian whose past work has focused on the connections between open-pit copper mines, technology, a...
Mark Monmonier, "Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography" (ESRI Press, 2019)
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography (ESRI Press, 2019), cartographic cogitator Mark Monmonier shares hi...
Nora Jaffary, "Reproduction and its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905" (UNC Press, 2016)
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nora Jaffary’s Reproduction and its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905 (University of North Carolina Press. 2016)...
Joy McCann, "Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean" (U New South Wales Press, 2018)
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Joy McCann discusses the great circumpolar ocean that surrounds Antarctica. McCann is the author of Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean (Univers...
Aaron Hale-Dorrell, "Corn Crusade: Khrushchev’s Farming Revolution in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union" (Oxford UP, 2018)
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Corn Crusade: Khrushchev’s Farming Revolution in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union (Oxford University Press, 2018), Aaron Hale-Dorrell re-evaluates Kh...
Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer, "Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This is the third of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene. Also listen to m...
E. H. Ecklund and D. R. Johnson, "Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think of Religion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It is common to see science and religion portrayed as mutually exclusive and warring ways of viewing the world, but is that how actual scientists see ...
Dominic Boyer, "Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene. Also listen to ...
Emily Lakdawalla, "The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job" (Springer, 2018)
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Lakdawalla talks about the design and construction of Curiosity, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory, one of the most sophisticated ma...
Cymene Howe, "Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene" (Duke UP, 2019)
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first of three interviews with Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer about their duo-graph, Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke University Pr...
Michael Kodas, "Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980s, fires burned an average of two million acres per year. Today the average is eight million acres and growing. Scientists believe that we ...
Matthew James, "Collecting Evolution: The Galapagos Expedition that Vindicated Darwin" (Oxford UP, 2017)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew James talks about the 1905 Galapagos Expedition organized by the California Academy of Sciences. James is a professor of geology at Sonoma Sta...
Daniel Veidlinger, "From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas" (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books in Buddhist Studies, I am joined by Daniel Veidlinger to discuss his exciting new book From Indra’s Net to Internet: Co...
Lindsey Green-Simms, "Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cars promise freedom, autonomy, and above all, movement but leave whole cities stuck in traffic, breathing polluted air, exposed of deadly crashes, an...
David Philip Miller, "The Life and Legend of James Watt" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For all of his fame as one of the seminal figures of the Industrial Revolution, James Watt is a person around whom many misconceptions congregate. In ...
Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hipp...
Andrew Wright Hurley, "Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth" (Camden House, 2018)
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Wright Hurley talks about the life and afterlife of the Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, a man whose reputation has shifted to reflect the ...
Michael Zakim, "Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy a...
William Gibbons, "Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2018)
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Video games are a significant part of popular entertainment in the twenty-first century. From Words with Friends to Grand Theft Auto, most people spen...
Stefan Al, "Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise: Green and Gray Strategies" (Island Press, 2018)
05 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Stefan Al, PhD, is a native of the Netherlands, a low-lying county that would not exist without flood protection, is an architect, urban designer, and...
Sharra L. Vostral, "Toxic Shock: A Social History" (NYU Press, 2018)
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1978, doctors in Denver, Colorado observed several healthy children who suddenly and mysteriously developed a serious, life-threatening illness wit...
Lukas Rieppel, "Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle" (Harvard UP, 2019)
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the discoveries of dinosaur fossils in the American West in the late nineteenth century, the United States became world renown for vertebrate pa...
Sarah Seo, "Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom" (Harvard UP, 2019)
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How the rise of the car, the symbol of American personal freedom, inadvertently led to ever more intrusive policing-with disastrous consequences for r...
Violet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019)
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Y...
Okezi Otovo, "Progressive Mothers, Better Babies: Race, Public Health, and the State in Brazil, 1850-1945" (U Texas Press, 2016)
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Okezi Otovo’s Progressive Mothers, Better Babies: Race, Public Health, and the State in Brazil, 1850-1945 (U Texas Press, 2016) explores the interse...
Donna Dickenson, "Me Medicine vs. We Medicine: Reclaiming Biotechnology for the Common Good" (Columbia UP, 2016)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Personalized healthcare―or what the award-winning author Donna Dickenson calls "Me Medicine"―is radically transforming our longstanding "one-size-...
David R. Montgomery, "Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life" (W. W. Norton, 2018)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life (W. W. Norton & Co., 2018), Dr. David R. Montgomery portrays hope amidst the backdrop that for...
Vanessa Heggie, "Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Vanessa Heggie talks about the history of biomedical research in extreme environments. Heggie is a Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation at th...
Tita Chico, "The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge and Science in the British Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2018)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Can science be seductive? According to Tita Chico, the answer is a resounding yes. In her new book, The Experimental Imagination: Literary Knowledge a...
Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, “Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How are markets made? In Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Juan...
John D. Hawks, "Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story" (National Geographic, 2017)
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
John D. Hawks talks about new developments in paleoanthropology – the discovery of a new hominid species Homo Naledi in South Africa, the Neandertha...
Ekaterina Svetlova, "Financial Models and Society: Villains or Scapegoats" (Elgar, 2018)
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The machines have taken over.... For many operating in investment management, it can certainly seem that way: factor investing, algorithmic investing,...
Anthony Ryan Hatch, "Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past forty years, U.S. prisons and jails have used various psychotropic drugs. In this interview, Anthony Ryan Hatch discusses the need to th...
Lina del Castillo, "Crafting a Republic for the World: Scientific, Geographic and Historiographic Inventions of Colombia" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lina del Castillo’s book explores scientific, geographic, and historiographic inventions in nineteenth-century Colombia. In this fascinating book, w...
Diana Pasulka, "American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology" (Oxford UP, 2019)
08 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of be...
Greta LaFleur, "The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Greta LaFleur invites readers to consider a different bod...
Robin Scheffler, “A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Could cancer be a contagious disease? Although this possibility might seem surprising to many of us, it has a long history. In fact, efforts to develo...
Anna Rose Alexander, "City on Fire: Technology, Social Change, and the Hazards of Progress in Mexico City, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016)
03 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Anna Rose Alexander’s City on Fire: Technology, Social Change, and the Hazards of Progress in Mexico City, 1860-1910 (University of Pittsburgh P...
David Beer, “The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception“ (Sage, 2019)
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What is the social role of data? In The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception (Sage, 2019), David Beer, a professor of sociology at the Universi...
Daniel Nemser, "Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2017)
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Nemser’s Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico(University of Texas Press, 2017) examines the long history...
Philip W. Clements, "Science in an Extreme Environment: The American Mount Everest Expedition" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018)
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Historian of Science Philip W. Clements discusses the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. His book, Science in an Extreme Environment: The America...
Matthew Edney, "Cartography: The Ideal and Its History" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past four decades, the volumes published in the landmark History of Cartography series have both chronicled and encouraged scholarship about ...
Amy Lippert, "Consuming Identities: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco" (Oxford UP, 2018)
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Along with the rapid expansion of the market economy and industrial production methods, such innovations as photography, lithography, and steam printi...
Paul Ramírez, "Enlightened Immunity: Mexico’s Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason" (Stanford UP, 2018)
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Ramírez’s first book explores how laypeople impacted the new medical techniques and technologies implemented by the imperial state in the fina...
David Munns, "Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest for Climate Control in the Cold War" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2017)
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Phytotron” is such a great name for something that is, when you look at it, a high-tech greenhouse. But don’t sell it short! The phytotron was ...
Pauline W. Chen, "Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality" (Vintage, 2008)
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student ...
Camisha Russell, "The Assisted Reproduction of Race" (Indiana UP, 2018)
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy have been critically examined within philosophy, particularly b...
Heidi Tworek, "News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900-1945" (Harvard UP, 2019)
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In our current moment marred by media monopolies and disinformation campaigns, it is easy to get caught up in the dizzying temporality of the news cyc...
Terence Keel, "Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science" (Stanford UP, 2018)
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of scientific racism as a pseudo-science of a bygone age, yet in both academic population genetics and popular ancestry testing, the sp...
Jeannette Eileen Jones, "Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936" (U Georgia Press, 2011)
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When President Trump talked of Africa as a continent of “shithole countries” where people lived in huts, he was drawing on a set of ideas made pop...
Thomas Dodman, "What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
12 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Feelings have a history and nostalgia has its own. In What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion(University of Chicago Press, 2...
Nara Milanich, "Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father" (Harvard UP, 2019)
11 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nara Milanich’s Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (Harvard University Press, 2019) explains how fatherhood, long believed to be impossible...
Abigail De Kosnik and Keith P. Feldman, "#Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation" (U Michigan Press, 2019)
05 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the new book #Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (University of Michigan Press, 2019), Abigail De Kosnik and Keith Feldman b...
Scott Wallace, "The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes" (Broadway Books, 2012)
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist Scott Wallace talks about a 2002 FUNAI expedition to find the Arrow People, one of the last uncontacted tribes in the world. Wallace is a w...
Kerim Yasar, "Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945" (Columbia UP, 2018)
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia UP, 2018) explores the soundscapes of modernity ...
Gökçe Günel, "Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi" (Duke UP, 2019)
24 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Whether in space colonies or through geo-engineering, the looming disaster of climate change inspires no shortage of techno-utopian visions of human s...
Heike Bauer, "The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture" (Temple UP, 2017)
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Influential sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld founded Berlin's Institute of Sexual Sciences in 1919 as a home and workplace to study homosexua...
Martin Collins, "A Telephone for the World: Motorola, Iridium, and the Making of a Global Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s easy to take for granted that one can pick up a cell phone and call someone on the other side of the planet. But, until very recently, this had...
F. Grillo and R. Nanetti, "Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Diverging Cases of China and Italy" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Francesco Grillo (co-authored with Raffaella Nanetti) about his latest book, Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Divergin...
Matthew Hersch, "Inventing the American Astronaut" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It seems logical that would NASA select military test pilots to be the first astronauts, right? They were used to risk. They were good with machines. ...
David Bissell, "Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities" (MIT Press, 2018)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of time do we endure on our daily commutes? What kind of space do we occupy? What new sorts of urbanites do we thereby become? In Transit Li...
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In ...
Diane Tober, "Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families" (Rutgers UP, 2019)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The development of a whole suite of new reproductive technologies in recent decades has contributed to broad cultural conversations and controversies ...
Raul Espejo, "Cybernetics and Systems: Social and Business Decisions" (Routledge, 2019)
10 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Regular listeners of this podcast will, no doubt, be familiar with the name of Raul Espejo, former Director of Operations of Stafford Beer’s famed C...