New Books Network

Radio ReOrient Season 13 Round up, hosted by Saeed Khan, Amina Easat Daas, Marchella Ward and Claudia Radiven

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, our hosts Saeed Khan, Amina Easat Daas, Marchella Ward and Claudia Radiven get together for a reflection and round up of the last sea...

Are We Living in the Golden Age of Transnational Repression?

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Government critics and pro-democracy campaigners used to be relatively safe when they fled into exile. Now transnational repression means that corrupt...

Imran Mulla, "The Indian Caliphate, Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince" (Hurst, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1924, the Republic of Turkey voted to abolish the Ottoman caliphate, ending a 400-year-long claim by the Ottomans that they were the leaders of the...

Lukas Foss: A "New American Music Series" Gallatin Lecture, April 15, 1982

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s episode from the Vault, we revisit a 1982 lecture by the composer Lukas Foss, a leader of the American musical avant garde of the 1960s a...

Zoë McGee, "Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel" (Manchester UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think. Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sha...

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us in...

Jose Eos Trinidad, "Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education" (Oxford UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education (Oxford UP, 2025), Jose Eos Trinidad reveals how organizations outside schools have crea...

Madhuri Deshmukh, "The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi" (Columbia UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview we discuss The Unraveling Heart: Women's Oral Poetics and Literary Vernacularization in Marathi (Columbia UP, 2025). Wom...

Jamie Rowen, "Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice" (Stanford UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past three decades, jurisdictions across the United States have developed alternatives to traditional criminal procedures and punishments for...

Sam Fullerton, "Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England" (Manchester UP, 2026)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Samuel Fullerton joins Jana Byars to talk about Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester UP 2024) to celebrate its paperback release. I...

Michael J. Illuzzi, "Mending the Nation: Reclaiming We The People in a Populist Age" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist Michael Illuzzi has a fascinating new book on peoplehood in the United States, focusing on different political actors at different...

Sara Ann Swenson, "Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2025)

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sara Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religion and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages at Dartmouth College. Her areas of ...

Leah Lowthorp, "Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India" (Indiana UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Deep Cosmopolitanism: Kutiyattam, Dynamic Tradition, and Globalizing Heritage in Kerala, India explores the extraordinary past and present of Kutiyat...

Q. Edward Wang, "Staple to Superfood: A Global History of the Sweet Potato" (Columbia UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sweet potatoes were among the American crops Christopher Columbus brought back to Europe—where they were thought to be an aphrodisiac. In China, thi...

Kerry Gottlich, "From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How did modern territoriality emerge and what are its consequences? From Frontiers to Borders: How Colonial Technicians Created Modern Territoriality...

Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke UP, 2026) explores the work of Puerto Rican musical superstar Bad Bu...

Sonia Hazard, "Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media" (Oxford UP, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media (Oxford UP, 2025) offers a fresh account of evangelical power by uncovering how the Ameri...

Douglas Greene, "In Stalin's Shadow: Trotsky and the Legacy of the Moscow Trials" (Resistance Books, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Most people on the contemporary left see Stalin as an unfortunate stain on the history of the global left, a part of the historical process that we’...

Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui, "The Making of Global FIFA: Cold War Politics and the Rise of João Havelange to the FIFA Presidency, 1950-1974" (De Gruyter, 2023)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui, author of The Making of Global FIFA: Cold War Politics and the Rise of João Havelange to the FIFA ...

Aija Leiponen, "Digital Innovation Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Based on applied economics and from the perspective of an innovator seeking to develop a new digital business, Digital Innovation Strategy (Ca...

Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, "P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance" (Duke UP, 2026)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke UP, 2026) explores the work of Puerto Rican musical superstar Bad Bu...

Angie Hobbs, "Why Plato Matters Now" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

14 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Does Plato matter? An ancient philosopher whose work has inspired and informed countless thinkers and poets across the centuries, his ideas are no lon...

Fernando Luiz Lara, "Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2024)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

To study the built environment of the Americas is to wrestle with an inherent contradiction. While the disciplines of architecture, urban design, land...

Mercedes Valmisa, "All Things Act" (Oxford UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

All Things Act explores the collective character of action to expand the ways we think about agency. First, it resists viewing agency as a capacity, ...

Steven J. Brady, "Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The first book of its kind, Less Than Victory: American Catholics and the Vietnam War (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Steven J. Brady explores both the ...

Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, "Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior" (MIT Press, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior (MIT Press, 2025), Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer reveal how s...

Dagomar Degroot, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: An Environmental History of Our Place in the Solar System" (Harvard UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet...

Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone" (Duke UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison...

Dagmar Herzog, "The New Fascist Body" (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone – the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. A...

Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale UP, 2025) by Dr. Bruno J. Strasser and Dr. Thomas Schlich presents a history of masks protecting again...

Richard Fine, "The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany" (Cornell, 2023)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany (Cornell, 2023), Richard Fine recounts the inte...

Sarah Dowling, "Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

People who lie down are a fixture of contemporary literature, art, and life. Murder victims, protesters, invalids, depressives, sex workers, and more:...

Scott W. Gregory, "Bandits in Print: The Water Margin and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel" (Cornell UP, 2023)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Bandits in Print: "The Water Margin" and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel (Cornell UP, 2023) uses the classic novel The Water Margin (Shuih...

Matthijs Lok, "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, and the Making of the Past" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary Europe seems to be divided between progressive cosmopolitans sympathetic to the European Union and the ideals of the Enlightenment, and c...

Ofer Sharone, "The Stigma Trap: College-Educated, Experienced, and Long-Term Unemployed" (Oxford UP, 2024)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An eye-opening look at how all American workers, even the highly educated and experienced, are vulnerable to the stigma of unemployment. After receivi...

Brian Martin, "From Underground Railroad to Rebel Refuge: Canada and the Civil War" (ECW Press, 2022)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Despite all we know about the Civil War, its causes, battles, characters, issues, impacts, and legacy, few books have explored Canada’s role in the ...

Noam Sienna, "Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds" (Indiana UP, 2025)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Author Noam Sienna unveils a vast Sephardic world created by these books. This literary network transcended geographical boundaries, connecting Jewish...

Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women's Labor (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Dr. Julia Meszaros offers a provocative ...

Stephen Skowronek, "The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Has American democracy outstripped its constitutional accommodations? Faith in the resilience and adaptability of the US Constitution rests on a long ...

Eve Warburton, "Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State" (Cornell UP, 2023)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State (Cornell UP, 2023), Eve Warburton traces nationalist policy trajectories in...

Ian M. Cook, "Scholarly Podcasting: Why, What, How" (Routledge, 2022)

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring what academic podcasting is and what it could be, Ian Cook's Scholarly Podcasting (Routledge, 2023) is the first to consider the why, wha...

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

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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

Marcy Norton, "The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492" (Harvard UP, 2024)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024), Dr. Marcy Norton offers a dramatic new interpretation of t...

Anna Sergi, "How to Recognize the Mafia Abroad: Critical Notes on ‘ndrangheta Mobility" (Policy Press, 2025)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The influence and spread of clans and families within the ‘ndrangheta - the Calabrian mafia - is international yet recognising their activities is n...

Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Cervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What's more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that's nearly 100% preventabl...

Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the oceans of ink devoted to the monumental movie star/businesswoman/political activist Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (1932-2011), her beauty and not-s...

"Plenty for All: The Art of Rick Fröberg" (Akashic Books, Ltd., 2016)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Rick Fröberg was an accomplished artist and musician born in Southern California who spent most of his early creative years in San Diego before movin...

Harold James, "Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization" (Yale UP, 2023)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale UP, 2023), distinguished economic historian Harold James offers a fresh perspe...

Chris Boucher, "Harry "Bucky" Lew: A Biography of the First Black Professional Basketball Player" (McFarland, 2026)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Harry "Bucky" Lew leapt over pro basketball's color wall in 1902 and continued to integrate every single role in the game over the next 25 years. He w...

Amitav Acharya, "The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West" (Hachette UK, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—e...

Stuart Klawans, "Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges" (Columbia UP, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Gr...

Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim ...

David Broder, "Mussolini's Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy" (Pluto Press, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The fastest-rising force in Italian politics is Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia - a party with a direct genealogy from Mussolini's regime. Surging ...

Graeme Brooker, "The Story of the Interior: How We Have Shaped Rooms and How They Shape Us" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From traditional nomadic dwellings to state-of-the-art airports, through monumental temples and Baroque palaces to high-rise apartments and high-fashi...

Kenneth Aizawa, "Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation: A Granular Approach" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a ...

Bruce Berglund, "The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power" (Triumph Books, 2026)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An eye-opening account of how Russia's leaders have used sports as a political tool to solidify their global power "Victories in sport do more to cem...

Jeffrey Ahlman, "Ghana: A Political and Social History" (Zed Books, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last two decades, historians have steadily moved away from writing longue durée national histories. Especially in the wake of the global his...

Rob Harvilla, "60 Songs That Explain The 90s" (Twelve, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A companion to the #1 music podcast on Spotify, this book takes listeners through the greatest hits that define a weirdly undefinable decade. The 1990...

Barry G. Webb, "Job: Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary" (Lexham Academic, 2023)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Book of Job confronts the troubling issues that life throws at us as we try to live in trusting obedience to God. How do we live in relation to G...

Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers a...

Danielle Alesi, "Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Consuming Empire, 1492-1700 (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) by Dr. Danielle Alesi examines how ...

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Summer 1936: Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, is tried for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. The all-white, all-male jury takes just fou...

Heino Falcke and Jörg Römer, "Light in the Darkness: Black Holes, the Universe, and Us" (HarperCollins, 2021)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An astrophysicist chronicles his quest to photograph a black hole and reflects on its spiritual ramifications in this international-bestselling memoir...

J. Logan Smilges, "Crip Negativity" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as ac...

Sarah Kunz, "Expatriate: Following a Migration Category" (Manchester UP, 2023)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Who are expatriates? How do they differ from other migrants? And why should we care about such distinctions? Expatriate: Following a Migration Catego...

Re-examining the Women’s Movement in Cold War South Korea and Beyond

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the past decade, feminism has become one of the heated topics in public debate in South Korea. Feminism is embraced by activists, attacked in elect...

Jo Mackiewicz, "Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace" (Springer, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This open access book describes and explains a fifty-year-old woman’s process of developing trade competences. Drawing from daily journal entries, p...

Moritz Föllmer, "The Quest for Individual Freedom: A Twentieth-Century European History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What does it mean to see oneself as free? And how can this freedom be attained in times of conflict and social upheaval? In this ambitious study, Mori...

Caitlin Vincent, "Opera Wars: Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How can cultural industries survive in the twenty-first century? In Opera Wars Inside the World of Opera and the Battles for Its Future Caitlin Vinc...

Anita Gonzalez, "Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea (University of Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Anita Gonzalez provides a rare perspective on performan...

John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about s...

Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Ol...

How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Your brain is the most remarkable thing in the known universe. Always trying to mend itself, and always trying to protect you, it’s in a constant s...

Marc Berman, "Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Marc Berman, the pioneering creator of the field of environmental neuroscience, has discovered the surprising connection between mind, body, and e...

Mary E. Stuckey, "Remembering Jefferson: Who He Was, Who We Are" (UP of Kansas, 2025)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mary E. Stuckey, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, has a brilliant new book that dive...

Sean Mathews, "The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East" (Hurst, 2025)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Where does Greece belong? Many look at the ancient Greek ruins of Athens, and see the cradle of Western civilization. But much of Greece’s history a...

Charles G. Thomas, "Ujamaa's Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defence Force, 1964-1979" (Ohio UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The immediate postcolonial moment brought both promise and peril for the states of Africa and their security. The process of decolonization generated ...

Christopher Jain Miller and Cogen Bohanec, "Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement" (SUNY Press, 2026)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Jain tradition, with roots in ancient India but now spread across the globe, is anything but static and monolithic. In Engaged Jainism, an interd...

Barbara Jane Brickman, "Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An ever-expanding and panicked Wonder Woman lurches through a city skyline begging Steve to stop her. A twisted queen of sorority row crashes her conv...

Tomer Persico, "In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea" (NYU Press, 2025)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Tomer Persico is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Rubinstein Fellow at Reichman University, and a Senior Research Scholar at t...

Christopher J. H. Wright, "The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative" (InterVarsity Press, 2025)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

God's mission is to reclaim the world. The church has a designated role to play. Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for missi...

Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth centuryA popular truism derive...

Sheiba Kian Kaufman, "Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama" (Oxford UP, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Persian Paradigms in Early Modern English Drama examines the concept of early modern globality and the development of European toleration discourse t...

Terra Jacobson and Spencer Brayton, "Valuing the Community College Library: Impactful Practices for Institutional Success" (ACRL, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Valuing the Community College Library: Impactful Practices for Institutional Success (2025, ACRL) provides a holistic approach to exhibiting communit...

W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted fo...

Rachel Midura, "Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe" (Cornell UP, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Midura joins Jana Byars to talk about Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and Communications Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP...

Jim Endersby, "The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology's Imaginary Futures, 1900-1935" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology’s Imaginary Futures, 1900–1935 by Jim Endersby In the early twentieth century, varied audiences took biology...

Jessica Kelly and Neal Shasore, "Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Reconstruction explores the impact of the First World War on the built environment - examining the immediate effects and aftermath of the Great War o...

Serk-Bae Suh, "Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2025) explores literary texts tha...

Nile Green, "Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean" (U Texas Press, 2026)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Sri Lanka has long sat astride the monsoon winds between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea – a small island at the centre of a very big story. F...

Dylan Loh, "China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy" (Stanford UP, 2025)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How has China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs transformed itself into one of the most assertive diplomatic actors on the global stage? What explains t...

Peter Frankopan, "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History" (Knopf, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth Transformed. An Untold History (Knopf, 2023) is a captivating and informative book that reveals how climate change has been a driving forc...

Erica Brown, "Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning" (Maggid, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Ecclesiastes has long been viewed as the great existential work of the Hebrew Bible, containing the famous cry "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." As...

Susanna Elm, "The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this (open-access) book, Susanna Elm radically changes our understanding of imperial rule in the later Roman Empire. As she shows, the so-called ea...

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

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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

T. R. Johnson, "New Orleans: A Writer's City" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

New Orleans is an indispensable element of America's national identity. As one of the most fabled cities in the world, it figures in countless novels,...

Helen J. Nicholson, "Women and the Crusades" (Oxford UP, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration. Helen J. Nicholson's book Wo...

Theodore J. Karamanski, "Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Theodore Karamanski joins fellow Lake Michigan enthusiast Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan. ...

Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a foren...

Chris Dietz, "Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender" (Routledge, 2022)

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender (Routledge, 2023) is a socio-legal study that offers a critique of what it means to self-declare...