New Books in the History of Science

Ian Hembrow, "Ralph Edwards: Rare Events--The Inside Story of a Worldwide Quest for Safer Medicines" (Springer, 2023)

30 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Medical treatments designed to help people can also be harmful or fatal. Around 2.5 million people die this way each year. So if any kind of medicine ...

The History of Contraception

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An interview with Donna J. Drucker, author of Contraception, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. We discuss reproductive justice, the his...

Paul A. Lombardo, "Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v...

Mònica Calabritto, "Murder and Madness on Trial: A Tale of True Crime from Early Modern Bologna" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)

23 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Monica Calabritto of Hunter College talks to us today about her new book, Murder and Madness on Trial: A Tale of True Crime from Early Modern Bologna...

Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theor...

Freddy Foks, "Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain" (U California Press, 2023)

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Freddy Foks's Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (U California Press, 2023) is a n...

David Baumeister, "Kant on the Human Animal: Anthropology, Ethics, Race" (Northwestern UP, 2022)

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While Immanuel Kant’s account of human reason is well known and celebrated, his account of human animality (Thierheit) is virtually unknown. Animali...

Joseph Giacomelli, "Uncertain Climes: Debating Climate Change in Gilded Age America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Even people who still refuse to accept the reality of human-induced climate change would have to agree that the topic has become inescapable in the Un...

Katherine Johnston, "The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World" (Oxford UP, 2022)

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World (Oxford UP, 2022) interrogates how people with an interest in Afr...

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

02 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers...

Declan Warde et al., "Safety As We Watch: Anaesthesia in Ireland 1847-1998" (Wordwell Books, 2022)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of anaesthesia which could be administered safely to eliminate the pain of surgery and other medical and dental procedures is widely con...

Heidi J. Larson, "Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away" (Oxford UP, 2020)

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around thei...

Dominique A. Tobbell, "Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after Wor...

Gordon Barrett, "China’s Cold War Science Diplomacy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the early decades of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China remained far outside mainstream international science — right?  Gordon B...

Nadia Abu El-Haj, "Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America" (Verso, 2022)

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds b...

Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)

19 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Ded...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Andrew S. Curran, "Who's Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race" (Harvard UP, 2022)

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Who's Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race (Harvard University Press, 2022) is the first translation and p...

Illuminations Episode 1: Experimental Methods

12 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have faith and science always been enemies? The story of Robert Hooke, a revolutionary working in the Scientific Revolution, exemplifies the ways in w...

Aya Homei, "Science for Governing Japan's Population" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aya Homei’s Science for Governing Japan’s Population (Cambridge UP, 2022) examines the science and policy of population in Japan, 1860s-1960s. ...

H. Yumi Kim, "Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan" (Oxford UP, 2022)

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To fend off American and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Japan strove to strengthen itself by drawing on the most updated ideas and pr...

Measure for Measure Episode 7: Kinsey

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Scientist Alfred Kinsey tried to differentiate human sexualities on a seven-point scale. In so doing, he brought us the basics of bisexuality. But the...

Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

06 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic...

Elizabeth T. Hurren, "Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Elizabeth T. Hurren maps...

Gravity's Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 rocked the science community. In this episode, Chris Gondek spoke with author Harry Collins, whose book ...

Nuclear Ghosts: Ryo Morimoto (EF, JP)

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

John and Elizabeth, in this special Centennial episode of Recall this Book, explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Ant...

Garima Garg, "Heavens and Earth: The Story of Astrology Through Ages and Cultures" (Penguin, 2023)

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What will the future bring? The ancient astrologer turned the impulse to answer this question into something meaningful by mapping the night skies and...

Lynn Cullen, "The Woman with the Cure" (Berkley Books, 2023)

19 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The essential contribution of The Woman with the Cure (Berkley Books, 2023) can be summarized in one sentence: like most of its future readers (I as...

Lee D. Baker, "From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954" (U California Press, 1998)

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On today’s podcast we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dr. Lee D. Baker’s book From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and ...

Curtis Runstedler, "Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and ...

The History of Teletherapy

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hannah Zeavin, lecturer in the department of History and member of the executive committees of both the Center for New Media and the Center for Scienc...

Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America,...

Deafness “Cures” in History

22 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long hist...

Lorraine Daston Books In Dark Times (JP)

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our Books in Dark Times series offered John this 2021 chance to speak with Lorraine Daston of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. ...

On Émile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (1912)

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Steven Lukes about Émile Durkheim's classic The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Lukes is the author of Emile Durkhei...

Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Jewett is the author of Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (2020) and Science, Democracy, and the America...

Ciara Breathnach, "Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902" (Oxford UP, 2022)

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ciara Breathnach's book Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on the evolution o...

Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its ...

Robin Vose, "The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle Over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God" (Reaktion, 2022)

09 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Robin Vose (St. Thomas University) talks about his new monograph, The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle over Word and Image for t...

Lorraine Daston Rules the World (EF, JP)

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lorraine Daston, Rules: A Short History of What We Live by (Princeton UP, 2022). Historian of science Lorraine Daston's wonderful new book, Rules:...

Samantha Muka, "Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

04 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Te...

Dannelle Gutarra Cordero, "She Is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dannelle Gutarra Cordero's expansive study incorporates writers, cultural figures and intellectuals from antiquity to the present day to analyze how d...

Donovan O. Schaefer, "Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin" (Duke UP, 2022)

02 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism after Darwin (Duke UP, 2022), Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the conventional wisdom that feeling...

Felicity M. Turner, "Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: ...

Josiah Ober, "The Greeks and the Rational: The Discovery of Practical Reason" (U California Press, 2022)

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tracing practical reason from its origins to its modern and contemporary permutations, the Greek discovery of practical reason, as the skilled perform...

Edmund Leach on Roman Jakobson's Contributions to Linguistics

30 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear the1982 Gallatin Lecture, in which Sir Edmund Leach discussed the work of Roman Jakobson, who he...

Ed Cohen, "On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know" (Duke UP, 2022)

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagn...

Neurasthenia

23 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks with Saronik about neurasthenia. A disease that no longer exists, neurasthenia was a nineteenth century Amer...

Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

19 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Kn...

Efram Sera-Shriar, "Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022) examines Briti...

Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

18 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics ...

Shelley Fraser Mickle, "Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality" (Imagine, 2020)

17 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Performed at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was the culmination of years of grit, compassion, an...

Samuel J. Redman, "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums" (Harvard UP, 2022)

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2022 for paperback edition), Samuel J. Redman, Assoc...

Jacalyn Duffin, "Covid-19: A History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

12 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, ...

Cathy McClive, "The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant" (Iter Press, 2022)

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Cathy McClive (Florida State University) offers the first full-length bilingual edition of an extraordinary treatise on childbirth written by a seve...

Irene Hilden, "Absent Presences in the Colonial Archive: Dealing with the Berlin Sound Archive's Acoustic Legacies" (Leuven UP, 2022)

03 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condit...

Jennifer Smith, "Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain" (Vanderbilt UP, 2021)

03 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain (Vanderbilt UP, 2021) argues that the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nym...

Wei Yu Wayne Tan, "Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While the loss of sight—whether in early modern Japan or now—may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) ...

Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be...

Travis Zadeh, "Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos" (Harvard UP, 2023)

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the thirteenth century, the Persian naturalist and judge Zakariyyāʾ Qazwīnī authored what became one of the most influential works of natur...

Probability

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Justin Joque talks with Júlia Irion Martins about Probability. This conversation is part of our High Theory in STEM s...

Anita Guerrini, "Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

16 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Experimentation on animals—particularly humans—is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. But the ideas and attitudes that encourage bio...

Science Against the People: Anti-Capitalist Science

16 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It’s difficult to criticise science from the left. Right-wingers attack science and liberals defend it. Science for the People is a radical movement...

Melancholy

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Laura Stokes talks about melancholy. One of the four humors in ancient humoral medicine, melancholy, or black bile, is...

The Future of Rules: A Discussion with Lorraine Daston

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Which rules do we obey and which ones can we find a way around? What distinctions can be drawn between rules, models to be emulated and algorithms. Lo...

Erin Webster, "The Curious Eye: Optics and Imaginative Literature in Seventeenth-Century England" (Oxford UP, 2020)

04 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s guest, Erin Webster, is the author of The Curious Eye: Optics and Literature in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2020). A bo...

David Kaiser, "Well, Doc, You're In: Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe" (MIT Press, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Freeman Dyson (1923–2020)—renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast—helped invent modern physics. Not bound by disciplinary divisions, he we...

Joanna Ebenstein, "Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide" (MIT Press, 2022)

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was a celebrated Dutch anatomist, master embalmer, and museologist. He is best remembered today for strange tableaux, craf...

John Stillwell, "The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics" (Princeton UP, 2022)

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics (Princeton UP, 2022) investigates the evolution of the concept of proof--one of the most sig...

Mackenzie Cooley, "The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but there is a dark undercurrent to this fêted e...

Annalisa Berta and Susan Turner, "Rebels, Scholars, Explorers: Women in Vertebrate Paleontology" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Rebels, Scholars, Explorers: Women in Vertebrate Paleontology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Professors Annalisa Berta and Susan Turner ...

Leslie A. Geddes, "Watermarks: Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2020)

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, wa...

Nadine Weidman, "Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2021)

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture...

The Psychedelic World of Hollywood Hospital

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Erika Dyck on the book she co-authored with Jesse Donaldson on an unusual chapter in Canada’s me...

On David Hume's "A Treatise of Human Nature"

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1739, Scottish philosopher David Hume set out to chart the nature and limits of human knowledge. He published his theories and findings in what wou...

On Einstein's Discoveries

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Before Albert Einstein, our understanding of space, time, and gravity hadn’t really shifted from the theories that Sir Isaac Newton developed in the...

Michael Slouber, "Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras" (Oxford UP, 2016)

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Slouber's Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras (Oxford UP, 2016) looks at a traditional medical sys...

On Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"

28 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Dawin’s 1859 book The Origin of Species introduced his famous theory of evolution. Darwin developed his theories of life and evolution after...

The Future of Brainwashing: A Discussion with Daniel Pick

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones and psychoanalyst Daniel Pick discuss brainwashing, thought control and group think. In the case of totalitarian ...

Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, "Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Franz Boas is remembered today as one of the most important figures in the history of anthropology. In the United States, he is widely created with cr...

Kirsti Niskanen and Michael J. Barany, "Gender, Embodiment, and the History of the Scholarly Persona" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

26 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Gender, Embodiment, and the History of the Scholarly Persona. Incarnations and Contestations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), Professors Kirsti Niska...

History, Space, and Getting Things Wrong

14 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s episode of How To Be Wrong we welcome Dr. Steven Dick, retired Chief Historian at NASA and one of the leading historians of space expl...

Ethan Czuy Levine, "Rape by the Numbers: Producing and Contesting Scientific Knowledge about Sexual Violence" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Science plays a substantial, though under-acknowledged, role in shaping popular understandings of rape. Statistical figures like “1 in 4 women have ...

Karen Hunger Parshall, "The New Era in American Mathematics, 1920–1950" (Princeton UP, 2022)

12 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The New Era in Mathematics, 1920-1950 (Princeton University Press, 2022) Karen Parshall explores the institutional, financial, social, and politi...

The Twisted Science of Great Replacement Theory

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On May 14, 2022, a shooter opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Ten people were killed, an additional three injured. The suspect in the ...

William C. Kirby, "Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China" (Harvard UP, 2022)

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill purportedly meant to revive U.S. dominance in research and devel...

On Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1962, American philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn was struck by Aristotle’s beliefs about...

Georg Striedter, "Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns" (MIT Press, 2022)

07 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Mod...

On John Maynard Keynes’ "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money"

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

John Keynes’ book, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was published in England at the tail end of the Great Depression. This text is ...

On "Encyclopédie"

02 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

One of the earliest modern encyclopedias was printed in France in the 18th century. Unlike many encyclopedias that came before it, this text was writt...

Sandra Eder, "How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An eye-opening exploration of the medical origins of gender in modern US history. Today, a world without "gender" is hard to imagine. Gender is at the...

Sarah Neville, "Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

29 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, works of botany underwent a radical change in the English book trade. A genre that was onc...

Asad Q. Ahmed, "Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia" (U California Press, 2022)

26 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In his dense yet delightful new book Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia (University of California Pr...

On Edwin Hubble’s "The Realm of the Nebulae"

22 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Until the publication of Edwin Hubble’s 1936 book, The Realm of the Nebulae, astronomers believed that the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the univ...

Elena Aronova, "Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of the Cold War" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

19 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Increasingly, scholars in the humanities are calling for a reengagement with the natural sciences. Taking their cues from recent breakthroughs in gene...

Lindsay Starkey, "Encountering Water in Early Modern Europe and Beyond" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What is holding the oceans back from entirely flooding the earth? While a twenty-first century thinker may approach the answer to this question wit...

Nina Rattner Gelbart, "Minerva's French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France" (Yale UP, 2021)

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Minerva’s French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France (Yale University Press, 2021), Nina Gelbart, Professor of History and Anita ...

Mark Solovey, "Social Science for What? Battles over Public Funding for the 'Other Sciences' at the National Science Foundation" (MIT Press, 2020)

01 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is part two of a two part interview. Mark Solovey’s ‘Social Science for What?’ is essential reading for anyone in either the history of sc...

Kimberly Anne Coles, "Bad Humor: Race and Religious Essentialism in Early Modern England" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

29 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kimberly Anne Coles is Professor of English at the University of Maryland; her first book, Religion, Reform and Women’s Writing in Early Modern Eng...

The Science Wars: Post-Truth and the Nature of Science

29 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to the final day of our weeklong deep dive into the politics of education. Today, we’ve got another episode of Cited for you. If you haven’...

Lachlan Fleetwood, "Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

28 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the idea that the Himalayas have the world’s tallest peaks—by a large margin—is entirely uncontroversial. Just about anyone can name Moun...