New Books Network
Episodes
164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration and the Dreyfus Affair (JP)
05 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet...
P. C. Saidalavi, "Seeking Allah's Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Why Muslims in South India observe hierarchical intra-communal relationships despite the egalitarianism of their religionIn Seeking Allah’s Hierarc...
Tom Griffiths, "The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind" (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind (Henry Holt and Co., 2026) is an exploration of the quest to use mathematic...
Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris" (UP of Mississippi)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout US history, only three Black women—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris—have given successfully recognized bids for...
Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing: Political Zoologies of the French Enlightenment (Routledge, 202...
Dafeng Xu, "Chinatown: San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake and the Paradox of American Immigration Policy" (JHU Press, 2026)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. Spanning 30 city blocks and h...
Rob Kutner, "The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting" (Wicked Son, 2025)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting (Wicked Son, 2025) is packed with Jew-facts, Jew-figures, and the original, never-before-seen documents from ...
Ning Leng, "Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China" (Cambridge, 2025)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge, 2025), Ning Leng shows how Chinese officia...
Hollay Ghadery, "The Unravelling of Ou" (Palimpsest Press, 2026)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, award-winning and celebrated author Farzana Doctor interviews Hollay Ghadery about her novel, The Unravelling of Ou (Palimp...
Robert Guffey, "Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos" (Headpress, 2026)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Hollywood Haunts the World: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos (Headpress, 2026), Robert Guffey deconstructs the most powerful t...
Neelum Saran Gour, "Requiem in Raga Janki" (Penguin Viking, 2018)
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the early years of the twentieth century, in what was then British India, culture thrived in the city of Allahabad. In this vibrant hub of musician...
Janet Kintner, "A Judge’s Tale: A Trailblazer Fights for her Place on the Bench" (She Writes Press, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Janet Kintner survived a difficult father and several assaults, but she didn’t let any of it stop her from pursuing law school as one of three women...
Jacqueline Couti and Anny Dominique Curtius, "Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings" (Liverpool UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings (Liverpool UP, 2025) bridges the gap between the Car...
David McCrone, "Changing Scotland: Society, Politics and Identity" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Scotland is a nation that has undergone significant changes over the last 50 years or so. This is, of course, true of much of the Western world but, a...
Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts ...
Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to the political, acts of redaction, erasure, and blacking out sit in awkward tension with the myth of transparent governance, borderles...
Jennifer Vail, "Friction: A Biography" (Harvard UP, 2026)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Friction, the force that resists motion, is synonymous with difficulty and complication. If you’ve ever replaced tires worn smooth by the road or re...
Sunny Dhillon, "Hide and Sikh: Letters from a Life in Brown Skin" (Wolsak and Wynn, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Sunny Dhillon about his book, Hide & Sikh: Letters from a Life in Brown Skin (Wolsak & Wynn, 20...
Edward Amoroso, "Reaching the Chasm: How to Drive Your Early-Stage Start-Up to Scale" (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
One of the greatest challenges facing any start-up is “crossing the chasm”: bridging the gap between early adopters and mass-market buyers. Yet ma...
Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Located in the Papantla municipality of the Mexican state of Veracruz, El Tajín is a UNESCO World Heritage site but a lesser-known tourist destinatio...
Andrew Monaghan, "Blitzkrieg and the Russian Art of War" (Manchester UP, 2025)
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A cutting-edge investigation of how Russia makes war. Russian strategy in the twenty-first century has been described in terms of 'hybrid' warfare, a...
Luca Cottini, "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powe...
Arnoud S. Q. Visser, "On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All" (Princeton UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A lively and entertaining cultural history of a supremely annoying intellectual vice Intellectuals have long provoked scorn and irritation, even downr...
Jessica Lake, "Special Damage: The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law" (Stanford UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 1788, Mary Smith was ruined and banished from "civilised" society when her neighbor accused her of carrying a bastard child. To silence the ruinous...
Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga, "The Chronicle of John of Nikiu: Coping with Crisis in Post-Roman Egypt" (U California Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the midst of profound political changes in late seventh-century Egypt, after the end of Roman hegemony and during Islamic rule, a bishop named John...
Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, "China and the Global Economic Order" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs...
Iida Turpeinen, "Beasts of the Sea" (Little, Brown, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Iida Turpeinen is a literary scholar writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. Her short stories exploring th...
Allison Caine, "Restless Ecologies: Climate Change and Socioecological Futures in the Peruvian Highlands" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the high Andean grasslands 4,500 meters above sea level, Quechua alpaca herders live on the edges of glaciers that have retreated more rapidly in t...
Jason Roberts, "We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and Enduring Hopes for Development in Papua New Guinea" (U Arizona Press, 2024)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
An ethnography of indigenous lives amidst subsistence labor, large-scale logging, and unrealized schemes, We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and...
Twentieth Century
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Twentieth Century (1934) is a screwball comedy that moves like a runaway train and we are delightfully tied to the tracks. John Barrymore’s audacio...
Jens Ludwig, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually gro...
Gina Schouten, "The Anatomy of Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“Liberal egalitarianism” refers to a family of political views that are “liberal” in taking individual rights to be of premier importance and ...
Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are com...
Michael Hurley, "Waterways of Bangkok: Memory, Landscape and Twilight" (NUS Press, 2025)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Bangkok is one of the world’s great cities, and the central artery of that city is the Chaophraya River. Michael Hurley’s book, Waterways of Bang...
Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expan...
Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--rea...
Jeremy Black, "The Revolutionary War" (St. Augustine's Press, 2026)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Military historian Jeremy Black follows his engagement with the American Civil War (St. Augustine's Press, 2025) with a review of the Revolutionary Wa...
Margo LaPierre, "Ajar" (Guernica Editions, 2025)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Margo LaPierre about her poetry collection, Ajar (Guernica Editions, 2025). The poems in ...
Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex...
Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women" (Equinox, 2023)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Vanessa R. Sasson's book The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (Equinox, 2023) is a retelling of the story of the first Buddhist women...
The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
TCP’s inaugural episode features Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao, two scholars whose academic work and activism have helped to set the parameters of th...
Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—living beside each other, struggling against their circumstances, trying to bend destiny. As the sevent...
John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should)" (Oxford UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to John L. Rudolph about his book Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should) (Oxford UP, 2023). Few people question the importance of ...
Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War" (Stanford UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at on...
Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State Capacity under Soviet Communism" (Stanford UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secre...
Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the...
Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...
Nathan Munier, "Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, ...
Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500" (Harvard UP, 2023)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the...
Gaoheng Zhang, "Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities" (Fordham UP, 2025)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities (Fordham UP, 2025) by Dr. Gaoheng Zhang designs a novel analytical framework to a...
Federico Alvarez Igarzábal and Emmanuel Guardiola, "Video Games and Mental Health: Perspectives of Psychology and Game Design" (Transcript Publishing, 2024)
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How do video games and mental health intersect from the perspectives of psychology and game design? In recent years, the topic of mental health has ga...
Luis Rechani Agrait, "My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts" (Swan Isle Press, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts (Swan Isle Press, 2025) by Luis Rechani Agrait was translated into English by William Carlos Williams but not pub...
Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the simil...
Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal" (U Texas Press, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal (U Texas Press, 2025), Dr. Mark Gallagher presents an examination of male screen sex a...
Thomas Aiello, "Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta (U Nebraska Press, 2025) tells the story of Muhammad Ali’s return to th...
Robert Yee, "The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In The City's Defense: The Bank of England and the Remaking of Economic Governance, 1914-1939, Robert Yee examines how the City of London maint...
All You Need to Know about Russian Politics Today
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Host Licia Cianetti talks to two Russian experts, Vladislav Gorin and Alexandra Prokopenko, about the state of Russian domestic politics today. As Rus...
Tom Menger, "The Colonial Way of War: Violence and Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Empires, c. 1890-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The violence of colonial wars between 1890 and 1914 is often thought to have been uniquely shaped by the nature of each of the European empires. The ...
Max Telford, "The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Are humans really fish? Why are we the only animals with chins? How much of our DNA do we share with the trillions of bacteria in our bodies? For cent...
Cush Rodríguez Moz “Future Remains” The Common Magazine (Fall, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cush Rodríguez Moz speaks to Emily Everett about his essay “Future Remains: The Mysterious Allure of a Town in Ruins,” which appears in The Comm...
Najati Sidqi, "Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist: The Secret Life of Najati Sidqi" (U Texas Press, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, ...
Jovana Babović, "The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory" (Indiana UP, 2025)
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory (Indiana UP, 2025) gathers interviews with members of the last generation to experie...
Robinson Kariuki Mwangi, "The Influence of Early Keswick Theology of Sanctification in the Socio-Ethical Life of the East African Revival Movement: A Missional Perspective" (Langham Academic, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
I have long had an interest in both the Keswick movement and the East Africa Revival. Dr Robinson Kariuki Mwangi’s doctoral research brings the two ...
Rishi Rajpopat, "Panini's Perfect Rule: A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem in Sanskrit Grammar" (Harvard UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Around 500 BCE, the Indian scholar Pāṇini wrote a treatise on Sanskrit, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, describing a kind of language machine: an algebrai...
Swapna Kona Nayudu, "The Nehru Years: An International History of Indian Non-Alignment" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars of international relations, political thought, and India's international and diplomatic history are increasingly interested in the relevance ...
Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for under...
Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach, "A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe" (Princeton UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In small villages, bustling cities, and crowded ghettos across early modern Europe, Jewish women were increasingly active participants in the daily li...
Stephen Bezruchka, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than thos...
Rolando Pujol, "The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana" (Artisan Publishers, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Rolando Pujol's The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana (Artisan, 2025) celebrates the nostalgic pleasures of Americ...
Yossef Rapoport, "Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2025)
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today, much of the Middle East is “Arab”—an identity that now extends across North Africa and up through the Near East to Syria. Yet how did thi...
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flour...
Saundra Weddle, "The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban History of the Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice" (Penn State UP, 2026)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Saundra Weddle joins fellow Venetianist Jana Byars to talk about her pathbreaking new release, The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban History of the Sex Tr...
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conce...
LiLi Johnson, "Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racialization and the Making of Family" (NYU Press, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Delving into the complex interplay of race, kinship, and technology, Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racialization and the Making of Family ...
David Cleevely on Engineering Serendipity and Entrepreneurial Success
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Lucas hosts a compelling discussion with celebrated British entrepreneur and author David Cleevely. In this insightful podcast, Richard and ...
Betty Boyd Caroli, "A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch and the Dream of Affordable Housing" (Oxford UP, 2026)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Betty Boyd Caroli's biography of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch is the first full-length work on a seminal figure in the settlement house movement, which ...
Iain Jackson et. al., "Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company (Bloomsbury, 2025) pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the...
Brahim El Guabli, "Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences" (U California Press, 2025)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Desert Imaginations: A History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences (U California Press, 2025) traces the cultural and intellectual histories t...
Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with ...
Karin Wulf, "Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In eighteenth-century America, genealogy was more than a simple record of family ties—it was a powerful force that shaped society. Lineage: Genealo...
Colette Einfeld and Helen Sullivan, "How to Conduct Interpretive Research: Insights for Students and Researchers" (Edward Elgar, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when an academic supervisor and their former student get together to write and edit a book on researching our social world? In How to Co...
Duy Lap Nguyen, "Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Political Economy: A New Historical Materialism" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual and philosopher associated with the Frankfurt School, who tragically died at 48 years old in 1940 as ...
Misty L. Heggeness, "Swiftynomics: How Women Mastermind and Redefine Our Economy" (U California Press, 2026)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
A feminist romp through pop culture that illuminates how women influence and shape the economy. Taylor Swift isn't just a pop megastar. She is a work...
Tara Lohan, "Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life" (Island Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life (Island Press, 2025) is not Tara’s first book, she authored one at age eight. From their...
Alaina M. Morgan, "Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora" (UNC Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Alaina Morgan's Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025) introduces the conc...
Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa (U Chicago Press, 2025) by Professor Toby Green t...
Melissa Adler, "Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects" (Fordham UP, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of ...
Jonathan Gleason, "Field Guide to Falling Ill" (Yale UP, 2026)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Gleason spent ten years writing the ten essays in his debut collection, Field Guide to Falling Ill (Yale UP, 2026). In them, Gleason braids...
David Albertson, "The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure Without Measure" (Oxford UP, 2025)
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The writings of ancient and medieval Christian mystics were rediscovered in the twentieth century, and today they are read more widely than ever befo...
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, dis...
Kay Dickinson, "Fernando: A Song by ABBA" (Duke UP, 2025)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Since its release in 1976, ABBA's song "Fernando" has been loved by fans around the globe both for its sing-along chorus and its revolutionary spirit....
Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, ...
Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by doc...
M. Hinds and J. Silverman, "Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black" (U Iowa Press, 2020)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black (University of Iowa Press, 2020), Michael Hinds and Jonathan Silverman examine tr...
Natasha Heller, "Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan" (U Hawai'i Press, 2025)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan (U Hawai'i Press, 2025), Natasha Heller makes two key interventi...
Gershom Gorenberg, "War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East" (Public Affairs, 2021)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942...
Donna Stein, "The Empress and I: How an Ancient Empire Collected, Rejected and Rediscovered Modern Art" (Skira, 2020)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, American curator Donna Stein served as an art advisor to Empress Farah Diba Pahlavi, the Shahbanu of Iran. Together, Stein and Pahlavi g...
Louis Rothschild, "Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons: Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities" (Karnac, 2023)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Dr. Louis Rothschild about his new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Breakdowns, Reunions, Potentialities (Karnac, 2024...
Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to m...
Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)
25 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Kimberley Johnson is about how the Black Power movement res...