New Books Network
Episodes
What happens when liberalism stops feeling like a victory and starts feeling like an exhaustion?
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director (acting) Eli Karetny speaks with philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre about liberalism not merely...
Lesley Nicole Braun, "Congo's Dancers: Women and Work in Kinshasa" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Lesley Nicole Braun to talk about her new book on Congo's dancers. Dance music plays a central role in the cultural, social, relig...
Adam S. Ferziger. "Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism" (NYU Press, 2025)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode Drora Arussy speaks with historian Adam S. Ferziger about his latest book, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation...
Matthew Davis, "A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Mount Rushmore is something of an American Rorschach test. Some look at the monument and see American patriotic ideals carved into a mountainside. Oth...
Philip J. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Philip Stern places the corporation―more than the Crown―at the heart of British colonialism, arguing that companies built and governed global empi...
Arseli Dokumaci, "Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds" (Duke UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For people who are living with disability, including various forms of chronic diseases and chronic pain, daily tasks like lifting a glass of water or ...
James Greenwood-Reeves, "Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States" (Routledge, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Was the use of violence on January 6th Capitol attacks legitimate? Is the use of violence morally justified by members of Extinction Rebellion or Jus...
Youshaa Patel, "The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line Between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present" (Yale UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
According to a famous prophetic report, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them.” What does “imitation” here mean? Rather, what does th...
Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...
Bo Tao, "Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cooperative Evangelist: Kagawa Toyohiko and His World, 1888-1960 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) by Bo Tao uncovers the extraordinary world of ...
Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and poli...
Judd B. Kessler, "Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics of Getting More of What You Want" (Little, Brown Spark, 2025)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What's the secret to scoring a reservation at a hot new restaurant? When should you enter a lottery to increase your odds of winning? Why did your nei...
Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career...
Scott Feinberg, “The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” (2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the October 12, 2023 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg offered an annotated list of the 100 greatest film books of all time. Drawi...
Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 ...
Insane for the Light (Fr Ron Rolheiser, OMI)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Father Ron Rolheiser’s new book Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years, which is about how to grow old well and be fruitful, fir...
Book Talk 69: American Medium, with Eyal Peretz
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What is “America” not only as a political entity but in our imagination? How can we properly envision America, without repeating clichés that fra...
Hans Van Eyghen, "The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs" (Routledge, 2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hans Van Eyghen's book The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs (Routledge, 2023) assesses whether belief in spirits is epistemically justified. It presen...
Pluribus Episodes 8 & 9 Analysis: It’s Over!
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It’s The Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of Pluribus, with our thoughts on episode 8, “Charm Offensive” and episode 9, “...
Mary M. Burke, "Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, she discusses her book, Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History (Oxford UP, 2023), which inserts successive Irish-Am...
Megan Bryson and Kevin Buckelew eds., "Buddhist Masculinities" (Columbia UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for opening a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. Accord...
Megha Anwer and Anupama Arora, "Screening Precarity: Hindi Cinema and Neoliberal Crisis in Twenty-first Century India" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Screening Precarity integrates a cultural analysis of film texts and history, industry transformations, and the violence and crises of political econ...
Matt Dawson, "The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Dawson's The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies (Routledge, 2023) presents Durkheim as an important political sociologist, ins...
Jeff Jarvis, "Magazine" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For a century, magazines were the authors of culture and taste, of intelligence and policy - until they were overthrown by the voices of the public th...
Prit Buttar, "To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941-42" (Osprey, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The city of St. Petersburg held great significance to the Russian Empire when Peter the Great first built the city in 1703. It was intended to be Russ...
Richard Wolin, "Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology" (Yale UP, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century's most important ph...
Deana Heath and Jinee Lokaneeta, "Policing and Violence in India: Colonial Origins and Contemporary Realities" (Speaking Tiger, 2025)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why does Indias police force, created under British rule, still echo the priorities of a bygone empire? And what is it about this institution, tasked ...
Brooke Kroeger, "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism" (Knopf, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism (Knopf, 2023) is a representative history of the American women who surmounted every impediment put...
Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking...
D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
02 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to ...
Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Kannada language boasts an ongoing literary tradition spanning more than a millennium, with a rich array of social positions and roles, religious ...
Baijayanti Roy, "The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism (2024) is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections tha...
Hans Kundnani, "Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
"Today’s 'pro-Europeans' would be horrified at the suggestion that their idea of Europe had anything to do with whiteness. In fact, many would find ...
Dagmar Schafer, "Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property" (MIT Press, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of...
Henry Grabar, "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World" (Penguin, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking sp...
Tony Spawforth, "What the Greeks Did for Us" (Yale UP, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a repl...
How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences is the ultimate guide to creating welcoming, safe, and accessible gatherings for everyone. With detai...
Betty Milan, "Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Analyzed by Lacan: A Personal Account (Bloomsbury, 2023) brings together the first English translations of Why Lacan, Betty Milan's memoir of her a...
Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power" (Yale UP, 2024)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the...
Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As w...
Alison Stone, "Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thi...
James Welsh et al., "Weathering Space" (American Scientist 114:1 2026)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Past human space missions were protected by Earth’s magnetic field and a measure of luck, but future missions beyond the Earth–Moon system will fa...
Anna Zeide, "US History in 15 Foods" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that repre...
Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel...
J. Barton Scott, "Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is religion today so often associated with giving and taking offense? To answer this question, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious...
Philip A. Wallach, "Why Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To achieve legitimate self-government in America's extended Republic, the U.S. Constitution depends on Congress harmonizing the country's factions thr...
J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich, "Stanley Kubrick's The Shining" (Taschen, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966 Stanley Kubrick told a friend that he wanted to make “the world’s scariest movie.” A decade later Stephen King’s The Shining landed on...
Amit Varshizky, "The Metaphysics of Race: Science and Faith in the Nazi Worldview" (Taylor & Francis, 2024)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Metaphysics of Race seeks to reframe debates on the conflicting scientific and spiritual traditions that underpinned the Nazi worldview, showing ...
Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, a...
Dejan Djokić, "A Concise History of Serbia" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dejan Djokić's book A Concise History of Serbia (Cambridge UP, 2023) covers the full span of Serbia's history – from the sixth-century Slav migra...
Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm, "Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life" (Reaktion, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life (Reaktion, 2023) recreates medieval people’s experience of time: as continuous and discontinuous, ...
Martin Jay, "Immanent Critiques: The Frankfurt School under Pressure" (Verso, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Frankfurt School’s own legacy is best preserved by exercising an immanent critique of its premises and the conclusions to which they often led. ...
Andy Cowan, "B-Side: A Flipsided History of Pop" (Headpress, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book B-Sides: A Flipsided History of Pop (Headpress, 2023), Andy Cowan explores a century of music b-sides. Pop music would be a diffe...
Amitav Acharya, "Tragic Nation: Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed" (Penguin Random House, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What went wrong with Burma’s democratic experiment? How are we to understand the country’s turbulent politics in the wake of the 2021 coup? In thi...
Marion Gibson, "Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials" (Scribner, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Witchfinder General, Salem, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch-hunts and witch trials sounds archaic and fanciful, these terms relics of an unenl...
Michael Newton, "It's a Wonderful Life" (British Film Institute, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life is one of the best-loved films of Classical Hollywood cinema, a story of despair and redemption in the aftermath...
Kate Clancy, "Period: The Real Story of Menstruation" (Princeton UP, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once...
Agata Fijalkowski, "Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial" (Routledge, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Addressing the relationship between law and the visual, this book examines the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show...
Scott A. Mitchell, "The Making of American Buddhism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Scott A. Mitchell is the Dean of Students and Faculty Affairs and holds the Yoshitaka Tamai Professorial Chair at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in...
Sara Byala, "Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African" (Oxford UP, 2023)
30 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Travel to virtually any African country and you are likely to find a Coca-Cola, often a cold one at that. Bottled asks how this carbonated drink bec...
Richard Bradford, "Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life ...
Jeremy Black, "A History of Artillery" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Black's book A History of Artillery (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) traces the development of artillery through the ages, providing a thorough s...
Helle Strandgaard Jensen, "Sesame Street: A Transnational History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Sesame Street: A Transnational History (Oxford UP, 2023), author Helle Strandgaard Jensen tells the story of how the American television show bec...
Stephanie Barczewski, "How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the Country House Became English (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Stephanie Barczewski is an exploration of the evolution of the quintessentially English ...
Philippe Huneman, "Why?: The Philosophy Behind the Question" (Stanford UP, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? In Why?: The Philosophy Be...
Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 18...
Jean Pfaelzer, "California, a Slave State" (Yale UP, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russ...
Kathryn Cornell Dolan, "Breakfast Cereal: A Global History" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Breakfast Cereal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2023) by Dr. Kathryn Dolan presents the long, distinguished and surprising history of breakfast cereal....
Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognized as one of the seminal films of the sixties, with its revisionary mix of genres including ...
Jolyon Baraka Thomas and Matthew D. McMullen, "The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly two decades, the Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (U Hawaii Press, 2024) has served as a valuable resource for students and schola...
Lisa Silverman, "The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity After the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2025)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In...
Thomas David DuBois, "China in Seven Banquets: A Flavourful History" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of New Books Network, Laura Goldberg speaks with Thomas David DuBois, Professor at Beijing Normal University, about his book China in...
Jack Z. Bratich, "On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death" (Common Notions, 2022)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death (Common Notions, 2022) Dr. Jack Z. Bratich explores the cultural elements in American society that suppor...
Matthew Pawlak, "Sarcasm in Paul's Letters" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this recent monograph Sarcasm in Paul's Letters (Cambridge University Press 2023, Matthew Pawlak offers the first treatment of sarcasm in New Tes...
Andrew Porwancher, "American Maccabee: Theodore Roosevelt and the Jews" (Princeton UP, 2025)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A scion of the Protestant elite, Theodore Roosevelt was an unlikely ally of the waves of impoverished Jewish newcomers who crowded the docks at Ellis ...
Divine Materialism and Integral Cosmology: Consciousness, Science, and the Spiritual Turn with Marco Masi
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore Marco Masi’s article “The Integral Cosmology of Sri Aurobindo: An Introduction from the Perspective of Consciousness ...
Jacob Bricca, "How Documentaries Work" (Oxford UP, 2023)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Previous guest Jacob Bricca (Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice) is a professional film editor and director, specializing in documentaries....
Abigail Bainbridge, "Conservation of Books" (Routledge, 2023)
28 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Editor Abigail Bainbridge and contributing author Sonja Schwoll join this discussion of Conservation of Books (Routledge 2023), the highly anticipat...
Andrea Gevurtz Arai ed., "Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An exciting collection of stories of change that most people don’t usually hear from the bottom up, from the grassroots, about what’s happening in...
Alastair McClure, "Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857-1922" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trials of Sovereignty: Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857-1922 (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers the first legal histo...
Daniel M. Herskowitz, "The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Judeo-Christian Thought of Franz Rosenzweig (Liverpool UP, 2025) offers a new interpretation of Franz Rosenzweig's magnum opus The Star o...
Aaron G. Fountain Jr., "High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America" (UNC Press, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2025), Aaron G. Fountain Jr. hig...
Henrike Kohpeiß, "Bourgeois Coldness" (Divided Publishing, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bourgeois Coldness (Divided Publishing, 2025) refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bour...
David Newheiser et al., "Art-Making as Spiritual Practice: Rituals of Embodied Understanding" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Art-Making as Spiritual Practice: Rituals of Embodied Understanding (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2025), edited by Professor David Newheiser, is a new ...
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, "Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, this is Eric LeMay, a host on the New Books Network. Today, I speak with Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, author of the new artist’s biography Lin-M...
How to Fix Baseball with author Jane Leavy
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For hard-core baseball folks, for anyone who cares for the future of the game, veteran baseball writer Jane Leavy compels attention with her provocati...
Sean Minogue, "Prodigals" (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Sean Minogue about this play, Prodigals (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2025). When a big-city dream...
Ruby Oram, "Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Home Work: Gender, Child Labor, and Education for Girls in Urban America, 1870-1930 (U Chicago Press, 2025) historian Ruby Oram tells the ...
Paul Kelly, "Against Postliberalism: Why ‘Family, Faith and Flag’ is a Dead End for the Left" (Polity, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Post-liberalism is all the rage on the American right, finding a common cause between legal theorists like Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen and risi...
Andrew W. Bernstein, "Fuji: A Mountain in the Making" (Princeton UP, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton UP, 2025) is A panoramic biography of Japan's iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the present Mount Fuji ...
Martin Herskovitz, "Son of the Shoah: Poems from a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor" (McFarland, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a third generation Holocaust survivor, this was an important conversation with a second generation survivor. Marty has been conducting workshops on...
Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm, "Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life" (Reaktion, 2023)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life (Reaktion, 2023) recreates medieval people’s experience of time: as continuous and discontinuous, ...
Joel S. Wit, "Fallout: The Inside Story of America's Failure to Disarm North Korea" (Yale UP, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After nearly four decades of negotiations, sanctions, summits, threats, and backdoor channels, the United States has failed to stop North Korea's nucl...
Elizabeth Suhay, "Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Faith in the American Dream—the idea that anyone who works hard can achieve success—has waned in the 21st century. Decreases in economic mobility,...
Anna Hájková, "People without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. ...
Nicholas L. Caverly, "Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures" (Stanford UP, 2025)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Nick Caverly talks about his new book, Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures (Stanford UP, 2025). For decades, Detro...
Jonathan Sumption, "The Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law" (Profile Books, 2026)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Across the globe, democracy is in crisis - in the UK alone, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypas...
Robin F. Hansen, "Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow" (U Regina Press, 2024)
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With rigorous scrutiny and deep care, Robin Hansen's Prison Born: Incarceration and Motherhood in the Colonial Shadow (U Regina Press, 2024) offer...
Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why,...
Lin Hongxuan, "Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic" (Oxford UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work U...