New Books Network
Episodes
Angela Jones and Barbara G. Brents, "Sex Work Today: Erotic Labor in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2024)
05 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A cutting-edge volume on current trends in sex work, from sugar relationships and cyber brothels to financial domination, sex worker activism, and fem...
Audrey Golden, "Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats" (Da Capo Press, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats (Da Capo Press, 2025) Audrey Golden traces the history of the iconic band The Raincoats staring of the...
Alicia M. Walker and Arielle Kuperberg, "Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why are BDSM practitioners so happy? It turns out, BDSM isn't just about whips and chains.With engaging stories and a warm, conversational tone, Boun...
Suzy Levinson, "Dinos That Drive" (Tundra Books, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Suzy Levinson is a children’s author and poet whose work has been featured in numerous anthologies, including A World Full of Poems (DK Children), I...
Georgios Varouxakis, "The West: The History of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin ...
Sarah Hurwitz, "As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us" (HarperOne, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwri...
Gerta Keller, "The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs" (Diversion Books, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by ...
Danya Ruttenberg, "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World" (Beacon Press, 2022)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice and Myra H. Kraft Memorial AwardOn Repentance and Repair: M...
Octavian Gabor, "Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher on the Road to Emmaus" (Wipf and Stock, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a world where faith and reason are perceived as enemies, this book describes them as companions. Readers of Immigrant on Earth: A Philosopher ...
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, "Music at World's End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland" (SUNY Press, 2025)
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music. In Iceland in the 1930s, classical musi...
Michael Fernandez and Amauri Serrano, "Streaming Video Collection Development and Management" (Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Streaming video is not new to the library environment, but recent years have seen an exponential growth in the number of platforms and titles availabl...
Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map ...
Madison Schramm, "Why Democracies Fight Dictators" (Oxford UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems ...
Jürgen Schaflechner, "Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan" (Oxford UP, 2018)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
About two hundred kilometers west of the city of Karachi, in the desert of Baluchistan, Pakistan, sits the shrine of the Hindu Goddess Hinglaj. Despit...
Emília Barna, "Working in Music on the Semi-Periphery: Local Cultural Production and Global Capitalism" (CEU Press, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Emília Barna to discuss her new book, Working in Music on the Semiperiphery: Local C...
Deepa Das Acevedo, "The War on Tenure" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As academia increasingly comes under attack in the United States, The War on Tenure (Cambridge UP, 2025) steps in to demystify what professors do a...
Michelle Bumatay, "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" (Ohio State UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State UP, 2025) is the first book-length study in English about Black francophone car...
Raymond J. McKoski, "David Davis, Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Judge" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of Abraham Lincoln's staunchest and most effective allies, Judge David Davis masterminded the floor fight that gave Lincoln the presidential nomin...
Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of s...
Jamal J. Elias, "After Rumi: The Mevlevis and Their World" (Harvard UP, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jamal J. Elias' new book After Rumi: The Mevlevis & Their World (Harvard UP, 2025) takes us on a historical journey through the development of the M...
157 Mangrum's Comical Computation (JP)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When does comedy become more than a laugh? Ben Mangrum of MIT joins RtB to discuss his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to ...
Uncanny E.T.A. Hoffmann with Peter Wortsman
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Step into the unsettling world of E.T.A. Hoffmann with translator Peter Wortsman to explore “The Sandman”—a tale that haunted Freud enough t...
1,000 Episodes with Miranda Melcher
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode marks a milestone for NBN host Dr. Miranda Melcher - 1,000 NBN interviews! This episode is a little different because she sits in the g...
Luis L. Schenoni, "Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Cambridge UP, 2025) provides a fresh theory connecting wa...
Erin M.B. O'Halloran, "East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World Between the Wars" (Stanford UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between the First and Second World Wars, activists across the British Empire began to think about what their homes might look like as independent nati...
Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, "The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail" (Heresy Press, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial e...
Clara A. B. Joseph, "India's Non-violent Freedom Struggle: The Thomas Christians (1599-1799)" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
India's Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against Eur...
Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Leading Toward Liberation: How to Build Cultures of Thriving in Higher Education (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Annmarie Caño reimagines ac...
Kathleen B. Casey, "The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America" (Oxford UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kathleen Casey joins Jana Byars to talk about The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America (Oxford UP, 2025). Purses and bags...
Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025)
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywher...