New Books in the History of Science
Episodes
Brandy Schillace, "Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Brandy Schillace about her book Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey's Head, the Pope's Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transpla...
Scott Tremaine, “Astrophysical Wonders” (Open Agenda, 2021)
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Astrophysical Wonders is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Scott Tremaine, Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the...
Joel Whitebook, "Freud: An Intellectual Biography" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook w...
Naomi Oreskes, "Why Trust Science?" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us...
Kristin Hussey, "Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
With the opening of the Suez Canal, larger and faster steamships, plus dockside engineering to accommodate them – time shrunk in the British Empire....
Paul Steinhardt, “Indiana Steinhardt and the Quest for Quasicrystals” (Open Agenda, 2021)
11 Nov 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...
Scott Soames, “Appreciating Analytic Philosophy” (Open Agenda, 2021)
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Appreciating Analytic Philosophy is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Scott Soames, Distinguished Professor of Philo...
Diego Armus and Pablo Gómez, "The Gray Zones of Medicine: Healers and History in Latin America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021)
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Edited by Diego Armus and Pablo Gómez, The Gray Zones of Medicine: Healers and History in Latin America (University of Pittsburgh Press 2021) tell ...
Lee Smolin, “Examining Time” (Open Agenda, 2021)
08 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Examining Time is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Lee Smolin who is a faculty member of Perimeter Institute for Th...
Justin K. Stearns, "Revealed Sciences: The Natural Sciences in Islam in Seventeenth-Century Morocco" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Islam's contributions to the natural sciences has long been recognized within the Euro-American academy, however, such studies tend to include one of ...
Sam Wineburg, "Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-mean...
Roger Penrose, “The Cyclic Universe” (Open Agenda, 2021)
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the last twenty years, cosmology has unexpectedly emerged as one of the most exciting and dynamic fields of modern science. From astoundingly preci...
Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coa...
Michael Yudell, "Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century" (Columbia UP, 2018)
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Race, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, is an idea with a measurable past, an identifiable present, and an uncertain future. The co...
Hannah Turner, "Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation" (UBC Press, 2020)
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How does colonialism still shape museums today? In Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation (UBC Press, 2020), Hannah ...
Gideon Fujiwara, "From Country to Nation: Ethnographic Studies, Kokugaku, and Spirits in Nineteenth-Century Japan" (Cornell UP, 2021)
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From Country to Nation: Ethnographic Studies, Kokugaku, and Spirits in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Cornell UP, 2021) tracks the emergence of the modern...
Darrin McMahon, “Deconstructing Genius” (Open Agenda, 2021)
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Deconstructing Genius is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and intellectual historian Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College....
Yan Liu, "Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China" (U Washington Press, 2021)
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically...
Brian Clegg, "Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe" (MIT Press, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and conseque...
Jonathan Rees, "The Chemistry of Fear: Harvey Wiley's Fight for Pure Food" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Though trained as a medical doctor, chemist Harvey Wiley spent most of his professional life advocating for "pure food"—food free of both adulterant...
Lisa T. Sarasohn, "Getting Under Our Skin: The Cultural and Social History of Vermin" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For most of our time on this planet, vermin were considered humanity's common inheritance. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats were universal scourges, as ...
Eric. S. Hintz, "American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D" (MIT Press, 2021)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Wonder how America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions beginning at the turn of the ea...
Vanilla Beer and Allenna Leonard, "Stafford Beer the Father of Management Cybernetics" (2019)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I am in conversation with artist and author Vanilla Beer about her 2019 book Stafford Beer: The Father of Management Cybernetics. Wh...
Tony Leggett, “The Problems of Physics, Reconsidered” (Open Agenda, 2021)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Problems of Physics, Reconsidered is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Physics Nobel Laureate Tony Leggett. The ...
Chris Bleakley, "Poems That Solve Puzzles: The History and Science of Algorithms" (Oxford UP, 2020)
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As algorithms become ever more significant to and embedded in our everyday lives, ever more accessible introductions to them are needed. While several...
Allan V. Horwitz, "DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used...
Nick Lane, “A Matter of Energy: Biology From First Principles” (Open Agenda, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A Matter of Energy: Biology From First Principles is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nick Lane, Professor of Evolu...
Marnie Hughes-Warrington and Anne Martin, "Big and Little Histories: Sizing Up Ethics in Historiography" (Routledge, 2021)
24 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Big and Little Histories: Sizing Up Ethics in Historiography (Routledge, 2021) introduces students to ethics in historiography through an exploration...
Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez, "Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human" (Princeton UP, 2021)
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are...
Justin Khoury, “Cosmological Conundrums” (Open Agenda, 2021)
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cosmological Conundrums is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Justin Khoury, Professor of Physics at the University o...
Bruce Clarke, "Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock an...
Paul Shankman, "Margaret Mead" (Berghahn Books, 2021)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tracing Mead’s career as an ethnographer, as the early voice of public anthropology, and as a public figure, this elegantly written biography links ...
Alexander Wragge-Morley, "Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650-1720" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The scientists affiliated with the early Royal Society of London have long been regarded as forerunners of modern empiricism, rejecting the symbolic a...
Richard Janko, “The Derveni Papyrus” (Open Agenda, 2021)
17 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Derveni Papyrus is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Richard Janko, Gerald F. Else Distinguished University Prof...
Katy Borner, "Atlas of Forecasts: Modeling and Mapping Desirable Futures" (MIT Press, 2021)
10 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
To envision and create the futures we want, society needs an appropriate understanding of the likely impact of alternative actions. Data models and vi...
H. Glenn Penny, "In Humboldt's Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology" (Princeton UP, 2021)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects coll...
Magnus Ramage and Karen Shipp, "Systems Thinkers" (Springer, 2020)
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I spoke with Magnus Ramage, co-author of Systems Thinkers (Springer, 2020). This second edition provides an update to Ramage’s an...
Roy Richard Grinker, "Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness" (Norton, 2021)
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Stigma about mental illness makes life doubly hard for people suffering from mental or emotional distress. In addition to dealing with their condition...
Thomas O. Haakenson, "Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas O. Haakenson's book Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada (Bloomsbury, 2021) focuses on the radical avant-garde interventions of Salo...
Jennifer L. Lambe, "Madhouse: Psychiatry and Politics in Cuban History" (UNC Press, 2017)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its founding in 1857, ...
Michael Gordin, “Science and Pseudoscience” (Open Agenda, 2021)
30 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Science and Pseudoscience is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Michael Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Co...
Kirsten A. Greer, "Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire" (UNC Press, 2020)
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Remapping empire, nature, and scientific enquiry beyond the simple binary exchange between periphery and metropole, Dr. Kirsten Greer demonstrates how...
Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer, "A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication" (Harvard UP, 2021)
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Statistical graphing was born in the seventeenth century as a scientific tool, but it quickly escaped all disciplinary bounds. Today graphics are ubiq...
Beverly A. Tsacoyianis, "Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon" (U Notre Dame Press, 2021)
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon by Beverly A. Tsacoyianis (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021...
Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, "ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's been a lot of resurgent interest in the Silk Routes lately, particularly looking at the cultural, political, and economic connections between ...
Martha Few et al., "Baptism Through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2020)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1804, King Charles IV of Spain enacted a royal order mandating the postmortem cesarean procedure in all of Spain's dominions. The Audiencia de Guat...
Kah Seng Loh and Li Yang Hsu, "Tuberculosis: The Singapore Experience, 1867-2018" (Routledge, 2021)
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tuberculosis: The Singapore Experience, 1867-2018 (Routledge, 2021), co-written by Dr. Loh, a historian and Dr. Hsu Li Yang, a medical doctor offers ...
John Davies and Alexander J. Kent, "The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
06 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union conducted an ambitious yet clandestine programme to map the world - from big cities like New York and Toky...
John Christopoulos, "Abortion in Early Modern Italy" (Harvard UP, 2021)
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have John Christopoulos, Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, to talk about his new book, Abortion in Earl...
Alex Csiszar, "The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Listen to this interview of Alex Csiszar, professor in the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University and author of The Scientific Jour...
Anthony Q. Hazard, "Boasians at War: Anthropology, Race, and World War II" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
28 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The realities of race that continue to plague the United States have direct ties to the anthropology. Anthropologists often imagine their discipline a...
Jack Green and Ros Henry, "Olga Tufnell’s 'Perfect Journey': Letters and Photographs of an Archaeologist in the Levant and Mediterranean" (UCL Press, 2021)
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Olga Tufnell (1905–85) was a British archaeologist working in Egypt, Cyprus, and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, a period often described as a gol...
Eugene T. Richardson, "Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health" (MIT Press, 2020)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how pub...
James Robert Brown, “Plato’s Heaven: A User’s Guide” (Open Agenda, 2021)
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Plato’s Heaven: A User’s Guide is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and James Robert Brown, Emeritus Professor of Phi...
Andrew Jenks, "Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth" (Anthem Press, 2021)
21 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Jenks' book Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (Anthem Press, 2021) explores the era of space collaboration (from 1970...
John Troyer, "Technologies of the Human Corpse" (MIT Press, 2020)
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination--not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that...
Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, "Forces of Nature: The Women who Changed Science" (Frances Lincoln, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, dis...
Adam Crymble, "Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The digital age has touched and changed pretty much everything, even altering how historical research is practiced. In his new book Technology and th...
Ruth Ahnert et al., "The Network Turn: Changing Perspectives in the Humanities" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We live in a networked world. Online social networking platforms and the World Wide Web have changed how society thinks about connectivity. Because of...
Nima Arkani-Hamed, “The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed” (Open Agenda, 2021)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nima Arkani-Hamed, faculty member at t...
Martin Summers, "Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions" (Oxford UP, 2019)
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the c...
Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical...
Rob Boddice, "Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this compelling history of the co-ordinated, transnational defence of medical experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rob ...
Jenny Bangham, "Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the inti...
Deborah R. Coen, "The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter" (U Chicago Press, 2013)
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recording...
Michael D. Gordin, "On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience" (Oxford UP, 2021)
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unp...
Jörg Matthias Determann, "Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World" (I. B. Tauris, 2020)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Muslim world is not commonly associated with science fiction. Religion and repression have often been blamed for a perceived lack of creativity, i...
Susan M. Reverby, "Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy" (UNC Press, 2013)
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some books are new, others are newly relevant – and so worth looking at from a new, contemporary perspective. Such is the case with Susan Reverby’...
Elise K. Burton, "Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity" (Stanford UP, 2021)
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Elise K. Burton’s important book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021), documen...
Douglas M. O'Reagan, "Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science after the Second World War" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Taking Nazi Technology: Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), Dou...
Miriam L. Kingsberg Kadia, "Into the Field: Human Scientists of Transwar Japan" (Stanford UP, 2019)
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did Japanese academics study their "fields" in places like Manchuria and Inner Mongolia in the transwar decades? How did they transform in the pos...
Mark A. Waddell, "Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today on New Books in History, Mark A. Waddell, Associate professor of History, Philosophy & Sociology of Science in the Department of History at Mic...
Agnieszka Kościańska, "Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland" (Indiana UP, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly su...
Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and s...
Roy Richard Grinker, "Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness" (Norton, 2021)
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centur...
William Max Nelson, "The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A new idea of the future emerged in eighteenth-century France. With the development of modern biological, economic, and social engineering, the future...
Courtney E. Thompson, "An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America" (Rutgers UP, 2021)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the origins of both popular and elite t...
A. Blair and K. von Greyerz, "Physico-Theology: Religion and Science in Europe, 1650–1750 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz have edited an outstanding volume that breaks important new ground in the history of early modern science and religio...
Alisha Rankin, "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science" (Alisha Rankin, 2021)
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poiso...
J. L. Heilbron, "The Ghost of Galileo: In a Forgotten Painting from the English Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2021)
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Heilbron, professor of history and vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, is one of our most distinguished - and pro...
Pey-Yi Chu, "The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science" (U Toronto Press, 2021)
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the Anthropocene, the thawing of frozen earth due to global warming has drawn worldwide attention to permafrost. Contemporary scientists define per...
Jacob Steere-Williams, "The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Typhoid fever is a food- and water-borne infectious disease that was insidious and omnipresent in Victorian Britain. It was one of the most prolific d...
Hannah Marcus, "Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we speak to Hannah Marcus, Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a...
Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton, "Vera Rubin: A Life" (Harvard UP, 2021)
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Few astronomers in the 20th century did as much to expand our understanding of the universe as Vera Rubin. To tell her remarkable story in their biog...
Jennifer M. Rampling, "The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A four-hundred-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. Tracing the development of al...
Michael Rossi, "The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America" (Chicago UP, 2019)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The appreciation of color is considered universal among human societies, yet varies vastly according to cultural norms and material circumstances. In ...
Earl Wright II, "Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology" (University of Cincinnati Press, 2020)
05 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology (U Cincinnati Press, 2020) is an extraordinary new volume that examines the o...
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hos...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University...
L. Ferlier and B. Miyamoto, "Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832" (Brill, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Forms, Formats and the Circulation of Knowledge: British Printscape’s Innovations, 1688-1832 (Brill, 2020) explores the printscape – the mental m...
Andrew Jewett, "Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America" (Harvard UP, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that...
Jonathan Sadowsky, "The Empire of Depression: A New History" (Polity, 2020)
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When is sorrow sickness? That is the question that this book asks, exploring how our understandings of sadness, melancholy, depression, mania and anxi...
Elizabeth Catte, "Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia" (Belt, 2021)
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrib...
David Fedman, "Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea" (U Washington Press, 2020)
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
David Fedman's Seeds of Control: Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020) is hard t...
Jeff Levin, "Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity's Two Greatest Institutions" (Oxford UP, 2020)
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though the current political climate might lead one to suspect that religion and medicine make for uncomfortable bedfellows, the two institutions have...
Alicia Puglionesi, "Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science" (Stanford UP, 2020)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skepti...
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, "Medieval Meteorology: Forecasting the Weather from Aristotle to the Almanac" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we speak to Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor of History at the University of Reading about her new book Medieval Meteorology: Foreca...
Erica Fretwell, "Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling" (Duke UP, 2020)
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and ...
Frederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018)
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies...
Sharon T. Strocchia, "Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy" (Harvard UP, 2019)
17 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Sharon Strocchia, Professor of History at Emory University. She is the author of Deat...