New Books in the History of Science

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

25 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is part one of a two part interview. "The social sciences have prospered best in the federal government where they have been included under broad...

Laurie Marhoefer, "Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

14 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1931, a sexologist arrived in colonial Shanghai to give a public lecture about homosexuality. In the audience was a medical student. The sexologis...

“Vaccine: The Human Story”: A Chat with Historian and Podcaster Annie Kelly

08 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Vaccine: The Human Story” is a podcast and video series that tells the story of the global fight against smallpox, from its earliest history as a...

Sarah Fox, "Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England" (U London Press, 2022)

07 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Fox's fascinating new book Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (U London Press, 2022) rewrites all that we know about eighteenth-cent...

Frank Close, "Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass" (Basic Book, 2022)

06 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in und...

Christina Ramos, "Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment" (UNC Press, 2022)

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment (UNC Press, 2022), Cristina Ramos tells us the story of Mexico city’s o...

Susan H. Brandt, "Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

29 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In her eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, the Philadelphia healer Elizabeth Coates Paschall asserted her ingenuity and authority with the b...

Howard Gardner, "A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory" (MIT Press, 2022)

23 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind was that rare publishing phenomenon--a mind-changer. Widely read by the general public as well as by educators, this...

Natalie Lira, "Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s" (U California Press, 2021)

22 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mirelsie Velázquez (Associate Professor & Rainbolt Family Endowed Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Natalie Lira (Associate...

Slobodan Perovic, "From Data to Quanta: Niels Bohr’s Vision of Physics" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

22 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Niels Bohr was a central figure in quantum physics, well known for his work on atomic structure and his contributions to the Copenhagen interpretation...

The Future of Public Opinion: A Conversation with Susan Herbst

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Politicians and corporations cannot only measure public opinion but also manipulate and create it. And they have been doing so since the 1930s when se...

Marga Vicedo, "Intelligent Love: The Story of Clara Park, Her Autistic Daughter, and the Myth of the Refrigerator Mother" (Beacon Press, 2021)

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1960s, Massachusetts writer and homemaker Clara Park and her husband took their 3-year-old daughter, Jessy, to a specialist after noticin...

Catherine Gibson, "Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic" (Oxford UP, 2022)

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Geographies of Nationhood: Cartography, Science, and Society in the Russian Imperial Baltic (Oxford UP, 2022) examines the meteoric rise of ethnograp...

Thomas Dixon and Adam Shapiro, "Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction" Second Edition. (Oxford UP, 2022)

16 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Debates about science and religion are rarely out of the news. Whether it concerns what's being taught in schools, clashes between religious values an...

Albert Folch, "Hidden in Plain Sight: The History, Science, and Engineering of Microfluidic Technology" (MIT Press, 2022)

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hidden from view, microfluidics underlies a variety of devices that are essential to our lives, from inkjet printers to glucometers for the monitoring...

Danielle J. Whittaker, "The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

13 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The puzzling lack of evidence for the peculiar but widespread belief that birds have no sense of smell irked evolutionary biologist Danielle Whittaker...

Timothy J. Jorgensen, "Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life" (Princeton UP, 2021)

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices--or perhaps we env...

Thomas J. Misa, "Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

06 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“My underlying goal,” writes my guest Tom Misa, “has been to display the variety of technologies, to describe how they changed across time, an...

Jason Sion Mokhtarian, "Medicine in the Talmud: Natural and Supernatural Therapies Between Magic and Science" (U California Press, 2022)

02 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the Talmud being the richest repository of medical remedies in ancient Judaism, this important strain of Jewish thought has been largely ignor...

Steven G. Epstein, "The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

30 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments, advocacy groups, and commercial interests have invested in the pursuit of something c...

Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2021)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading ...

John Lardas Modern, "Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

23 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain (U Chicago Press, 2021), religious studies scholar John Lardas Modern offers a spr...

Jim Al-Khalili, "The Joy of Science" (Princeton UP, 2022)

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s world is unpredictable and full of contradictions, and navigating its complexities while trying to make the best decisions is far from easy....

Shannon L. Walsh, "Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era: Watch Whiteness Workout" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Dr. Shannon Walsh, Associate Professor of Theatre History, and author of Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Prog...

Suman Seth, "Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

13 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Before the nineteenth century, travelers who left Britain for the Americas, West Africa, India and elsewhere encountered a medical conundrum: why did ...

Banu Subramaniam, "Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism" (U of Washington Press, 2019)

12 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), Banu Subramaniam examines how science and religion ha...

Pandemic Perspectives 10: Covid and the Art of Science Communication

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to John Tregoning, Imperial College respiratory infections...

Samuel J. Redman, "Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology" (Harvard UP, 2021)

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology (Harvard UP, 2021) is a searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effor...

Eugenics

09 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kim talks with Mercedes Trigos about eugenics. Mercedes references Francis Galton, who coined the term, preimplantation genetic profiling, and the f...

Sarah Walsh, "The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

05 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) examines the interconnections and relationship between Cath...

William F. Eadie, "When Communication Became a Discipline" (Lexington, 2021)

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Communication Became a Discipline (Lexington, 2021) argues that speech and journalism professors embraced the concept of communication between 1...

Maia Weinstock, "Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus" (MIT Press, 2022)

29 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus (MIT Press, 2022) follows Mildred Dresselhaus (or Millie, as everyone c...

Rana A. Hogarth, "Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840" (UNC Press, 2017)

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Medicine and slavery went hand-in-hand. But what was the nature of this vile partnership? In Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the ...

Emily Klancher Merchant, "Building the Population Bomb" (Oxford UP, 2021)

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Across the twentieth century, Earth's human population increased undeniably quickly, rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6.1 billion in 2000. As...

Pandemic Perspectives 8: Covid and the Embrace of the Biological World

27 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned UC San Diego neurophilosopher Patricia Churchl...

Nancy L Segal, "Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Adopted Apart" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

27 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A lot can be learned from scientific twin studies about the relative contributions of nature versus nurture to human experience. However, when such st...

Rod Tanchanco, "First Patients: The Incredible True Stories of Pioneer Patients" (First Hawk, 2022)

20 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Dr. Rod Tanchanco, a busy internist and clinical researcher, began digging into old journals looking for a deeper history of renowned medical inn...

Dashun Wang and Albert-László Barabási, "The Science of Science" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

13 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Dashun Wang, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management and McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University,...

James C. Ungureanu, "Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion—the notion of perennial conflict or warfare between the two—is part of our mod...

Zeynep Pamuk, "Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society" (Princeton UP, 2021)

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, ...

Pandemic Perspectives 4: Science, Societal Values and COVID

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Lorraine Daston, director emerita of the Max Planck In...

Thomas Haigh and Paul E. Ceruzzi, "A New History of Modern Computing" (MIT Press, 2021)

30 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In A New History of Modern Computing (MIT Press, 2021), Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi trace changes leading to the computer becoming a ubiquitous...

Lucy Ward, "The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus" (ONEWorld, 2022)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history, it has killed untold millions. In the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept...

Emily J. Levine, "Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University" (UChicago Press, 2021)

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During the nineteenth century, nearly ten thousand Americans traveled to Germany to study in universities renowned for their research and teaching. By...

John Bellamy Foster, "The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology" (Monthly Review Press, 2021)

23 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is slowly becoming clear that we are heading towards a deep ecological catastrophe. Our societies carbon footprint and its impact have been known f...

John W. I. Lee, "The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert" (Oxford UP, 2022)

21 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert (Oxford UP, 2022) reveals the untold story of a pioneering African American classical s...

Carl Erik Fisher, "The Urge: Our History of Addiction" (Penguin, 2022)

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat i...

Nanna Katrine Luders Kaalund, "Explorations in the Icy North: How Travel Narratives Shaped Arctic Science in the Nineteenth Century" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

16 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Harsh conditions, intense isolation, and acute danger inevitably impacted the making and communicating eighteenth-century scientific knowledge leading...

Pratik Chakrabarti, "Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth century, teams of men began digging the earth like never before. Sometimes this digging—often for sewage, transport, or minerals—...

Carl R. Weinberg, "Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism In America" (Cornell UP, 2021)

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism In America (Cornell UP, 2021), Carl R. Weinberg argues that creationism's tenacious ho...

The Future of Consciousness: A Discussion with Eva Jablonka

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What makes a living body conscious? What is consciousness and are there different types of it? These questions have been studied by Professor Eva Jabl...

Chase Burton, "Nicole Rafter" (Routledge, 2021)

02 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nicole Rafter (Routledge, 2021) is a critical summary and exegesis of the work of Nicole Rafter, who was a leading scholar of the history of biologi...

Paul M. Dover, "The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Paul Dover argues that changes in the generation, prese...

Mauro José Caraccioli, "Writing the New World: The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire" (U Florida Press, 2021)

21 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Is natural history a genre of political thought? What do we miss about the substance of political ideas when we ignore the study of nature? Writing ...

Marissa Mika, "Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda" (Ohio UP, 2021)

18 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of stories are given voice by Marissa Mika in Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda (Ohio UP, 2021), a fearless,...

Kathryn Millard, "Double Exposure: How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Double Exposure: How Social Psychology Fell in Love with the Movies (Rutgers University Press, 2022) examines the role of film in shaping social psy...

Carl Erik Fisher, "The Urge: Our History of Addiction" (Penguin, 2022)

16 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, since 2000, the United States has experienced over 700,000 deaths due to drug overdose. A...

Retraction Watch: A Discussion with Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, cofounders of Retraction Watch. We talk about lots of things, retracting very few. Ivan Ora...

Eric Herschthal, "The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress" (Yale UP, 2021)

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders' scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept ...

Kenneth L. Caneva, "Helmholtz and the Conservation of Energy: Contexts of Creation and Reception" (MIT Press, 2021)

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1847, Herman Helmholtz, arguably the most important German physicist of the nineteenth century, published his formulation of what became known as t...

Aubrey Clayton, "Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science" (Columbia UP, 2021)

10 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There is a logical flaw in the statistical methods used across experimental science. This fault is not a minor academic quibble: it underlies a reprod...

Michele Alacevich, "Albert O. Hirschman: An Intellectual Biography" (Columbia UP, 2021)

09 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the virtually unanimous agreement about his importance, describing Hirschman’s legacy and influence on others is not an easy task— arguabl...

Sydney A. Halpern, "Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis" (Yale UP, 2021)

09 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis. Government-sponsored researchers were attempting ...

Rudolf Ramm, "Medical Jurisprudence and Rules of the Medical Profession [1942]" (Springer, 2019)

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is the first translation in English of Rudolf Ramm’s textbook Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde: Der Arzt als Gesundheitserzieher, translate...

Paul A. Offit, "You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation" (Basic Book, 2021)

07 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life: From B...

Emily Levesque, "The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers" (Sourcebooks, 2021)

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Humans from the earliest civilizations through today have craned their necks each night, using the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange wo...

Kenneth Anderson, "Strychnine and Gold: The Untold History of Addiction Treatment in the United States" (2021)

02 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kenneth Anderson is the author of Strychnine and Gold, a two-volume history of the “untold story of addiction treatment in the United States.” An...

Joan L. Richards, "Generations of Reason: A Family's Search for Meaning in Post-Newtonian England" (Yale UP, 2021)

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In February, 1853, Augustus De Morgan, Professor of Mathematics at University College London, drew the last of a series of diagrams illustrating logic...

Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, "Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial" (Leuven UP, 2020)

31 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been ...

Carla Yanni, "The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2007)

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight ...

Ginger Nolan, "Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Racial Science and Twentieth-Century Design" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Attempting to derive aesthetic systems from natural structures of human cognition, designers looked toward the “savage mind”—a way of thinking t...

Thomas Huckle and Tobias Neckel, "Bits and Bugs: A Scientific and Historical Review of Software Failures in Computational Science" (SIAM, 2019)

17 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A true understanding of the pervasive role of software in the world demands an awareness of the volume and variety of real-world software failures and...

Rebekah Lee, "Health, Healing and Illness in African History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

17 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Health, Healing and Illness in African History (Bloomsbury, 2021), Rebekah Lee makes an overall assessment of the history and historiography and...

Harry Yi-Jui Wu, "Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization" (MIT Press, 2021)

14 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1948, the World Health Organization began to prepare its social psychiatry project, which aimed to discover the epidemiology and arrive at a classi...

Brendan Borrell, "The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine" (Mariner Books, 2021)

13 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Heroic science. Chaotic politics. Billionaire entrepreneurs. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive thr...

Jonathan B. Edelmann, "Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhagavata Purana and Contemporary Theory" (Oxford UP, 2020)

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhagavata Purana and Contemporary Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Professor Jonathan B. Edelmann develops...

Paul Halpern, "Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate" (Basic Books, 2021)

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Cr...

Robert W. Baloh and Robert E. Bartholomew, "Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria" (Copernicus, 2020)

04 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is one of the most extraordinary cases in the history of science: the mating calls of insects were mistaken for a “sonic weapon” that led to a ...

Karl Herrup, "How Not to Study a Disease: The Story of Alzheimer's" (MIT Press, 2021)

03 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, some of our best and brightest medical scientists have dedicated themselves to finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease. What happened? Whe...

Aro Velmet, "Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World" (Oxford UP, 2020)

31 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Aro Velmet's Pasteur's Empire: Bacteriology in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford UP, 2020) is a complex history of the Pasteur Institut...

Omar W. Nasim, "The Astronomer's Chair: A Visual and Cultural History" (MIT Press, 2021)

28 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The astronomer's chair is a leitmotif in the history of astronomy, appearing in hundreds of drawings, prints, and photographs from a variety of source...

Bill Schutt, "Pump: A Natural History of the Heart" (Algonquin Books, 2021)

28 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this lively, unexpected look at the hearts of animals—from fish to bats to humans—American Museum of Natural History zoologist Bill Schutt tell...

Paul Steinhardt, "Inflated Expectations: A Cosmological Tale" (Open Agenda, 2021)

28 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We have developed two distinct books, Indiana Steinhardt and the Quest for Quasicrystals, and Inflated Expectations: A Cosmological Tale, based on H...

Melinda Baldwin, "Making 'Nature': The History of a Scientific Journal" (U Chicago Press, 2015)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Melinda Baldwin about her book Making 'Nature': The History of a Scientific Journal (U Chicago Press, 2015). Melinda is...

Claudia de Rham, “The Pull of the Stars” (Open Agenda, 2021)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Pull of the Stars is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Claudia de Rham, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Impe...

Luis Lobo-Guerrero et al., "Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

22 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Luis Lobo-Guerrero is one of the three editors of this volume—Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires—and one of the six contrib...

Sarah S. Richardson, "The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The idea that a woman may leave a biological trace on her gestating offspring has long been a commonplace folk intuition and a matter of scientific in...

Migual Nicolelis, “Minds and Machines” (Open Agenda, 2021)

21 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Minds and Machines is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Miguel Nicolelis, Professor of Neurobiology, Neurology, Neur...

Rocky Kolb, “A Universe of Particles: Cosmological Reflections” (Open Agenda, 2021)

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A Universe of Particles: Cosmological Reflections is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Rocky Kolb, the Arthur Holly ...

Arnold Pacey and Francesca Bray, "Technology in World Civilization" (MIT Press, 2021)

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Technology in World Civilization represents a milestone history of technology. First published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of rece...

Britt Rusert, "Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture" (NYU Press, 2017)

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press, 2017), by Professor Britt Rusert (UMass-Amherst), [Insert li...

Diana Kelly, "The Red Taylorist: The Life and Times of Walter Nicholas Polakov" (Emerald, 2020)

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this podcast Diana Kelly, author of The Red Taylorist: The Life and Times of Walter Nicholas Polakov (Emerald, 2020), tells us of the advantage...

Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021)

08 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment...

Jennifer Ferng and Lauren R. Cannady, "Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks" (Voltaire Foundation, 2021)

08 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transn...

James Wynn and G. Mitchell Reyes, "Arguing with Numbers: The Intersections of Rhetoric and Mathematics" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One pervasive stereotype about mathematics is that it is objective, unbiased, or otherwise exempt from the influence of human passions. James Wynn a...

Anne Hugon, "Etre mère en situation coloniale: Gold Coast (années 1910-1950)" (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2020)

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For a majority of African women, the “colonial encounter” occurred at the maternity ward, the health centre, or Maternal and Infant Welfare Centre...

Philip Zimbardo, “Critical Situations” (Open Agenda, 2021)

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Critical Situations is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanfor...

Devin J. Vartija, "The Color of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Enlightenment is often either praised as the wellspring of modern egalitarianism or condemned as the cradle of scientific racism. How should we ma...

Oliver Rollins, "Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain" (Stanford UP, 2021)

26 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Exposing ethical dilemmas of neuroscientific research on violence, this book warns against a dystopian future in which behavior is narrowly defined in...

Claire Weeda, "Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion" (Boydell and Brewer, 2021)

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On Crusade, ar...