New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Matthew James Crawford, “The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800” (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2016)

23 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Matthew James Crawford’s new book is a fascinating history of an object that was central to the history of science, technology, and medicine in the ...

Stacy Alaimo, “Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)

21 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Stacy Alaimo’s Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) is a provocative reflection on...

Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds “Digital Sociologies” (Policy Press, 2016)

09 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

How do we do sociology in the digital era? In Digital Sociologies (Policy Press, 2016) Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and Th...

John Hadley, “Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals” (Lexington Books, 2015)

09 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

John Hadley’s Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals (Lexington Books, 2015) presents a novel approach to addressing ha...

Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)

04 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a ...

Matthew L. Jones, “Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)

23 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Matthew L. Jones’s wonderful new book traces a history of failed efforts to make calculating machines, from Blaise Pascal’s work in the 1640s thro...

Projit Bihari Mukharji, “Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Science: (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

16 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the hi...

Joshua Howe, “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming” (U. Washington Press, 2016)

10 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gat...

Dave Karpf, “Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy” (Oxford UP, 2016)

09 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

For the start of 2017, Dave Karpf is back on the podcast with his new book, Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy (Oxfor...

Nicholas A. John, “The Age of Sharing” (Polity Press, 2016)

06 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book The Age of Sharing (Polity Press, 2016), the sociologist and media scholar Nicholas A. John documents the history and current meanings...

Scott Selisker, “Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)

18 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Scott Selisker offers readers a fascinat...

Robert Aronowitz, “Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)

09 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Statistics have been on the minds of more people than usual in the run-up and post-mortem of this past U.S. presidential election; some feel as though...

Ruth Rogaski, “Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China” (U. California Press, 2014 reprint)

07 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski’s Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Pre...

Carol Upadhya, “Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy” (Oxford UP, 2016)

23 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How is India’s burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are softwa...

Robert Brain, “The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (U. of Washington Press, 2015)

12 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,” Oscar Wilde famously observed. Wilde’s waning romanticism can be read in stark contrast wit...

Sally Engle Merry, “The Seduction of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016)

07 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Quantification is not usually the first thing that comes to mind when hearing or reading about the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (OHC...

Robert Peckham, “Epidemics in Modern Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2016)

06 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Peckham’s Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores the crucial yet under-explored role that epidemics have played...

J.D. Trout, “Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Triumph of Modern Science” (Oxford UP, 2016)

15 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The social practice we call science has had spectacular success in explaining the natural world since the 17th century. While advanced mathematics and...

McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)

10 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for ...

Asif A. Siddiqi, “The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957” (Cambridge UP, 2013)

30 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In The Red Rockets’ Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Asif Siddiqi approaches the history...

Marc Raboy, “Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World” (Oxford UP, 2016)

21 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Our modern networked world owes an oftentimes unacknowledged debt to Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy demonstrates in Marconi: The Man Who Networked t...

E.R. Truitt, “Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art” (U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)

21 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s third law, coined in 1973, expresses the difficulty that peopl...

Mary Chayko, “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” (SAGE, 2016)

13 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

New technology has made us more connected than ever before. This has its advantages: instantaneous communication, expanded circles of influence, acces...

George Couros, “The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity” (Dave Burgess Consulting, 2015)

13 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most commonly used words right now in education is “innovation.” It seems to be part of any response to our collective anxiety over the...

Caroline Ford, “Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France” (Harvard UP, 2016)

12 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Caroline Ford’s Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France (Harvard University Press, 2016) explores the roots of French envir...

Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, “The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line” (Prometheus Books, 2016)

11 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Alfred S. Posamentier and Robert Geretschlager, The Circle: A Mathematical Exploration Beyond the Line (Prometheus Books, 2016) goes considerably beyo...

Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: A New Logic of Scientific Inquiry” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

07 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Is the scientific value of objectivity in conflict with the social justice commitment to diversity? In her latest book, Objectivity and Diversity: A N...

William Cavert, “The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City” (Cambridge UP, 2016)

29 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Air pollution may seem to be a problem uniquely of the modern age, but in fact it is one that has bedeviled people throughout history. In his book The...

James Rodger Fleming, “Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology” (MIT Press, 2016)

26 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

This is a book about the future – the historical future as three interconnected generations of atmospheric researchers experienced it and envisioned...

Simanti Dasgupta, “BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India” (Temple UP, 2015)

17 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

What links a water privatization scheme and a prominent software company in India’s silicon city, Bangalore? Simanti Dasgupta’s new book, BITS of ...

Lisa Bjorkman, “Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai” (Duke UP, 2015)

02 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Mumbai is in many ways the paradigmatic city of India’s celebrated economic upturn, but the city’s transformation went hand-in-hand with increasin...

Peter Wade, et. al. “Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America (Duke UP, 2014)

02 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past quarter-century, scientists have been mapping and exploring the human genome to locate the genetic basis of disease and track the histor...

Benjamin Peters, “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” (MIT Press, 2016)

16 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Something we might think of as the Soviet internet once existed, according to Benjamin Peters‘ new book, and its failure was neither natural nor ine...

Vanessa Ogle, “The Global Transformation of Time: 1870-1950” (Harvard UP, 2015)

13 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From the 1880s onward, Beirut-based calendars and almanacs were in high demand as they packaged at least four different calendars into one, including:...

Phaedra Daipha, “Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

09 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Phaedra Daipha’s thoughtful new book uses a careful sociological study of a particular community of weather forecasters to develop a sociology of de...

Noriko Manabe, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima” (Oxford UP, 2015)

09 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Noriko Manabe’s new book is a compelling analysis of the content, performance style, and role of music in social movements in contemporary Japan. Pa...

Ronald R. Kline, “The Cybernetics Moment: Or, Why We Call Our Age the Information Age” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)

08 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothe...

Sabine Arnaud, “On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015)

05 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Sabine Arnaud‘s new book explores a history of discursive practices that played a role in the construction of hysteria as pathology. On Hysteria: Th...

Mark Navin, “Values and Vaccine Refusal: Hard Questions in Epistemology, Ethics, and Health Care” (Routledge, 2016)

01 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Communities of parents who refuse, delay, or selectively decline to vaccinate their children pose familiar moral and political questions concerning pu...

Samuel Morris Brown, “Through the Valley of Shadows: Living Wills, Intensive Care, and Making Medicine Human” (Oxford University Press, 2016)

29 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Conversations about death during hospitalization are among the most difficult imaginable: the moral weight of a human life is suspended by stressful c...

Greg Jenner, “A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from Stone Age to Phone Age” (St. Martin’s Press, 2016)

26 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Jenner’s A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from Stone Age to Phone Age (St. Martins Press, 2016), explores the histo...

Saul J. Weiner and Alan Schwartz, “Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care” (Oxford University Press 2016)

22 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When clinicians listen to patients, what do they hear? In Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care (Oxford UP, 2016), Sau...

Gabriel Mendes, “Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry” (Cornell University Press, 2015)

15 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In his 1948 essay, “Harlem is Nowhere,” Ralph Ellison decried the psychological disparity between formal equality and discrimination faced by Blac...

Michael F. Robinson, “The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent” (Oxford UP, 2016)

03 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Michael F. Robinson‘s new book is such a pleasure to read, I cant even. It’s not just because you get to say Gambaragara over and over again if yo...

Katie Gentile, ed., “The Business of Being Made” (Routledge, 2015)

28 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Techn...

Rebecca Lemov, “Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity” (Yale University Press, 2015)

27 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Lemov‘s beautifully written Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity (Yale University Press, 2015) is at once an exploration o...

Mark Carrigan, “Social Media for Academics” (Sage, 2016)

27 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How can academics respond to the rise of social media? Or should they respond at all? In Social Media for Academics (Sage, 2016), Mark Carrigan, from ...

David J. Meltzer, “The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of Americas Ice Age Past” (U Chicago Press, 2015)

26 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

David J. Meltzer‘s new book is a meticulous study of the controversy over human antiquity in America, a dispute that transformed North American arch...

David Grazian, “American Zoo: A Sociological Safari” (Princeton UP, 2015)

20 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociolo...

Eben Kirksey, “Emergent Ecologies” (Duke UP, 2015)

18 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among...

Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015)

18 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bow...

Sigrid Schmalzer, “Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China” (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

11 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Sigrid Schmalzer‘s new book is an excellent and important contribution to both science studies and the history of China. Red Revolution, Green Revol...

Benjamin Castleman, “The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messaging and Other Behavioral Strategies Can Improve Education” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)

03 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Teenagers live in their phones. As an educator you can try to pull them away or meet them where they are. The 160-Character Solution: How Text Messagi...

Adam Kucharski, “The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling” (Basic Books, 2016)

31 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Kucharski, who won the 2012 Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, has delivered another winner in an area rife with both winners and losers. The ...

Jonathan Donner, “After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet” (MIT Press, 2015)

14 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to mobile phones, getting online is easier and cheaper than ever. In After Access: Inclusion, Development, and a More Mobile Internet (MIT Pres...

Elizabeth A. Wilson, “Gut Feminism” (Duke UP, 2015)

07 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Elizabeth A. Wilson‘s new book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of science studies and feminist theory. In its introduction,...

Justin E. H. Smith, “Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy” (Princeton UP, 2015)

02 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Justin E. H. Smith‘s new book is a fascinating historical ontology of notions of racial difference in the work of early modern European writers. Nat...

Jeffery Pomerantz, “Metadata” (MIT, 2015)

22 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

What is the “stuff” that fuels the information society in which we live? In his new book, Metadata (MIT 2015), information scientist Jeffrey Pomer...

Carin Berkowitz, “Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

16 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Carin Berkowitz‘s new book takes readers into the world of nineteenth century London to explore the landscape of medicine and surgery along with Cha...

Paul R. Josephson, “Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans: The Politics of Everyday Technologies” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)

29 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Paul R. Josephson‘s new book explores everyday technologies – fish sticks, sports bras, sugar, bananas, aluminum cans, potatoes, fructose, and mor...

Dale Jamieson, “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for Our Future” (Oxford UP, 2014)

21 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How are we to think and live with climate change? In Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means for O...

Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin, “Enjoying Machines” (MIT 2015)

06 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When we consider the television, we think not only about how it’s used, but also it’s impact on culture. The television, tv, telly, or tube, becam...

Peter J. Gloviczki, “Journalism and Memorialization in the Age of Social Media” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)

30 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Humans have coped with tragedy using ritual and memorials since the Neolithic era. Doka called a memorial a space invested with meaning, “set aside ...

Nathan Altice, “I Am Error: The Nintendo Family Computer-Entertainment System Platform” (MIT Press, 2015)

23 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The genre of “platform studies” offers both researchers and readers more than an examination of the technical machinations of a computing system. ...

Natasha Myers, “Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter” (Duke UP, 2015)

21 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

After reading Natasha Myers’s new book, the world begins to dance in new ways. Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter (Duk...

Brian P. Copenhaver, “Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment” (Cambridge UP, 2015 )

15 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the...

Anna L. Tsing, “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” (Princeton UP, 2015)

06 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Anna L. Tsing‘s new book is on my new (as of this post) list of Must-Read-Books-That-All-Humans-Who-Can-Read-Should-Read-And-That-Nonhumans-Should-F...

Stephen Macekura, “Of Limits and Growth: The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

04 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Today, sustainability is all the rage. But when and why did the idea of sustainable development emerge, and how has its meaning changed over time? St...

Nick Hopwood, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud” (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

30 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Hopwood‘s Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (University of Chicago Press, 2015) blends textual and visual analysis to answer t...

Jorg Matthias Determann, “Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States: Networks of Science in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2015)

29 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Jorg Matthias Determann‘s new book looks at the history of modern biology in the Arab Gulf monarchies, focusing on the treatment of evolution and re...

Dan Bouk, “How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

23 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Who made life risky? In his dynamic new book, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (University of Chicago Pre...

Megan Prelinger, “Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age” (Norton, 2015)

19 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Megan Prelinger‘s beautiful new book brings together the histories of technology and visuality to ask the question, “What cultural history of elec...

Eric T. Meyer and Ralph Schroeder, “Knowledge Machines: Digital Transformations of the Sciences and Humanities” (MIT Press, 2015)

15 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

By now it is incontrovertible that new technology has had an effect on how regular people get information. Whether in the form of an online newspaper ...

Peter A. Shulman, “Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)

09 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Peter A. Shulman‘s new book is a fascinating history of the emergence of a connection between energy (in the form of coal), national interests, and ...

Anita Guerrini, “The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

04 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Anita Guerrini‘s wonderful new book explores Paris as a site of anatomy, dissection, and science during the reign of Louis XIV between 1643-1715. Th...

Colin Milburn, “Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter” (Duke UP, 2015)

27 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Colin Milburn’s wonderful new book looks carefully and imaginatively at the relationship between nanotechnology and play. Mondo Nano: Fun and Games ...

Eugene Raikhel, Todd Meyers, Emily Yates-Doerr, “Somatosphere.net”

13 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Somatosphere is “a collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, ps...

James E. Strick, “Wilhelm Reich, Biologist” (Harvard UP, 2015)

06 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

“Life must have a father and mother…Science! I’m going to plant a bomb under its ass!” The author of the line above – who scrawled it in hi...

Joseph M. Reagle, “Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web” (MIT Press, 2015)

02 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What do we know about the individuals who make comments on online news stories, blogs, videos and other media? What kind of people take the time to po...

Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, “Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship” (Oxford UP, 2015)

28 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Jessica Baldwin-Philippi is the author of Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship (Oxford Univer...

Isabelle Dussauge, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, and Francis Lee, “Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine” (Oxford UP, 2015)

26 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Valuation is a central question in contemporary social science. Indeed the question of value has a range of academic projects associated with it, whet...

Federico Marcon, “The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan” (U of Chicago, 2015)

22 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Federico Marcon‘s new book opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. The Knowledge of Nature...

Ryan Craig, "College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education" (Palgrave McMillan, 2015)

21 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

AirBnB has dramatically altered the landscape for the hotel, tourism, and real estate sectors. Uber and Lyft have done the same to transportation. But...

Dana Simmons, “Vital Minimum: Need, Science, and Politics in Modern France” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

15 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Dana Simmons‘s marvelous and thoughtful new book takes on a question that many of us likely take for granted: “What is a need; what is a want, a d...

Kristin Peterson, “Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria” (Duke UP, 2015)

10 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Kristin Peterson‘s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade l...

Sandra Harding, “Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

04 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Sandra Harding‘s new book Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research (University of Chicago Press, 2015) raises new questions ...

Liz McFall, “Devising Consumption Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending” (Routledge, 2014)

02 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The role of financial services in individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives is more important than ever. In Devising Consumption: Cultural Econ...

Kelly J. Whitmer, “The Halle Orphanage as Scientific Community: Observation, Eclecticism, and Pietism in the Early Enlightenment” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

30 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Kelly J. Whitmer‘s new book offers a history of science set in the Halle Orphanage, a building that was founded in the middle of the 1690s in the Pr...

Shellen Wu, “Empires of Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920” (Stanford UP, 2015)

25 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Shellen Wu‘s new book is a fascinating and timely contribution to the histories of China, science, technology, and the modern world. Empires of Coal...

Nicole Starosielski, “The Undersea Network” (Duke UP, 2015)

25 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Nicole Starosielski‘s new book brings an environmental and ecological consciousness to the study of digital media and digital systems, and it is a m...

Stefan Ecks, “Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India” (NYU Press, 2013)

19 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Drugs exist that are meant to help people feel better. The doctors who prescribe them might believe that they work, while their patients do not. In ex...

Candis Callison, “How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Duke UP, 2014)

14 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Candis Callison‘s timely and fascinating new book considers climate change as a form of life and articulates how journalists, scientists, religious ...

Alexandra Minna Stern, “Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)

10 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Due in part to lobbying efforts on behalf of the human genome project, human genes tend to be thought of in light of the present–genetic components ...

Janet Vertesi, “Seeing like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

10 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Janet Vertesi‘s fascinating new book is an ethnography of the Mars Rover mission that takes readers into the practices involved in working with the ...

Eva Hemmungs Wirten, “Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information” (U of Chicago, 2015)

01 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

When we study the history of a famous scientific figure – especially one that has gone on to become a cultural icon – we are dealing not just with...

Raf De Bont, “Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870-1930” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

24 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

While museums, labs, and botanical gardens have been widely studied by historians of science, field stations have received comparatively little attent...

Jonathan Coopersmith, “Faxed: The Rise and Fall of the Fax Machine” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015)

17 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Coopersmith‘s new book takes readers through the century-and-a-half-long history of the fax machine and the technologies that shaped and we...

Meredith K. Ray, “Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy” (Harvard UP, 2015)

08 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

According to sixteenth-century writer Moderata Fonte, the untapped potential of women to contribute to the liberal arts was “buried gold.” Explori...

James A. Secord, “Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age” (U of Chicago Press, 2014)

03 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

James A. Secord‘s new book is both deeply enlightening and a pleasure to read. Emerging from the 2013 Sandars Lectures in Bibliography at the Cambri...

Jonathan Eig, “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” (Norton, 2014)

03 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Eig is a New York Times best-selling author of four books and former journalist for the Wall Street Journal. His book The Birth of the Pill: ...