New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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...

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...