Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

Corey Ross, "Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These...

Marietje Schaake, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power ...

Norman Naimark, “Stalin’s Genocides” (Princeton UP, 2010)

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Absolutely no one doubts that Stalin murdered millions of people in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. His ruthless campaign of “dekulakization,” his pit...

Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)

05 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the mom...

Alexandre Lefebvre, "Liberalism as a Way of Life" (Princeton UP, 2024)

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life—and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your lib...

Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of ...

Mary Bridges, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century.  In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers...

Leonard Cassuto, "Academic Writing as if Readers Matter" (Princeton UP, 2024)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Academic writing isn’t known for its clarity. While graduate students might see reading and writing turgid academic prose as a badge of honor—a si...

Behind the Mic: How Danielle D’Orlando is Transforming Academic Audiobooks at Princeton UP

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Princeton University Press publishes some of the best books every year, racking up accolades and launching the careers of thousands of scholars. As an...

Camilla Nord, "The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health" (Princeton UP, 2024)

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific devel...

Karl Marx, "Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Th...

Isaac Nakhimovsky, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton UP, 2024)

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Prin...

Yaacob Dweck, "Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas" (Princeton UP, 2019)

08 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1665, Sabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah with a mass following throughout the Ottoman Empire and Europe, announced that the redemption of the...

David Lay Williams, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" (Princeton UP, 2024)

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist David Lay Williams has a new book that traces the problem of economic inequality through the thought of many of the canonical think...

Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)

01 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political his...

Christine Folch, "The Book of Yerba Mate: A Stimulating History" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Brewed from the dried leaves and tender shoots of an evergreen tree native to South America, yerba mate gives its drinkers the jolt of liquid efferves...

Ronnie Grinberg, "Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals" (Princeton UP, 2024)

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly m...

Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without ...

Victoria Smolkin, "A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism" (Princeton UP, 2018)

18 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The specter of the “Godless” Soviet Union haunted the United States and continental Western Europe throughout the Cold War, but what did atheism m...

Lauren Benton, "They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires. Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slav...

Shaul Magid, "Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical" (Princeton UP, 2021)

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rabbi Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane ...

Anthony Abraham Jack, "Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But wh...

Tehila Sasson, "The Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the Making of Neoliberalism after Empire" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After India gained independence in 1947, Britain reinvented its role in the global economy through nongovernmental aid organisations. Utilising existi...

Noah Heringman, "Deep Time: A Literary History" (Princeton UP, 2023)

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “...

Anna Bonnell Freidin, "Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome" (Princeton UP, 2024)

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Across the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, anxieties about childbirth tied individuals to one another, to the highest levels of imperial politics, e...

Julia Sonnevend, "Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Politics is a site of performance, and contemporary politicians often perform the role of a regular person--perhaps someone we would like to have a be...

Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the ...

Benjamin Nathans, "To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement" (Princeton UP, 2024)

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A gripping history of the Soviet dissident movement, which hastened the end of the USSR--and still provides a model of opposition in Putin's Russia. B...

Jan Eeckhout, "The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work" (Princeton UP, 2021)

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as a society we want successful, profitable companies because, as Jan Eeckhout says in The Profit Parado...

Musa al-Gharbi, "We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite" (Princeton UP, 2024)

28 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status--without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged. Society ...

Anton Howes, "Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2020)

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past 300 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way ima...

David Badre, "On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done" (Princeton UP, 2020)

21 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton UP, 2020) is a look at the extraordinary ways the brain turns thoughts into actions—and how thi...

Mark R. Beissinger, "The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion" (Princeton UP, 2022)

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Examining the changing character of revolution around the world, The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion (Pr...

Paula Bialski on Middletech, Software Work, and the Culture of Good Enough

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Paula Bialski, an Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen,...

Jonathan Marc Gribetz, "Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO's relationship to Zionism and Israel In September 1982, the Israeli militar...

Mark Peterson, "The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power" (Princeton UP, 2019)

14 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for...

David J. Hand, "Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters" (Princeton UP, 2020)

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There is no shortage of books on the growing impact of data collection and analysis on our societies, our cultures, and our everyday lives. David Hand...

Alexandre Lefebvre, "Liberalism as a Way of Life" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In political philosophy, “liberalism” is not the name of a particular social platform. Rather, it refers to a framework for thinking about polit...

Meaghan Stiman, "Privileging Place: How Second Homeowners Transform Communities and Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In recent decades, Americans have purchased second homes at unprecedented rates. In Privileging Place: How Second Homeowners Transform Communities an...

Michael Sonenscher, "Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word" (Princeton UP, 2022)

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what’s at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it?...

Erin Lin, "When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rural Cambodia" (Princeton UP, 2024)

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman,...

Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022)

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of...

Allison J. Pugh, "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work ha...

Stephanie Ternullo, "How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past several decades, predominantly White, postindustrial cities in America’s agriculture and manufacturing centre have flipped from blue t...

Richard E. Ocejo, "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Li...

Sarah Nooter, "How to Be Queer: An Ancient Guide to Sexuality" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The idea of sexual fluidity may seem new, but it is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, who wrote about queer experiences with remarkable frankness...

Adam Goodman, "The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants" (Princeton UP, 2020)

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Many of us know that immigrants have been deported from the United States for well over a century, but has anyone ever asked how? In The Deportation M...

David S. Richeson, "Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2019)

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

David S. Richeson's book Tales of Impossibility: The 2000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2019...

Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld, "The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics" (Princeton UP, 2024)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Princeton UP, 2024) traces the political history of American p...

Raghuram G. Rajan and Rohit Lamba, "Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The whole world has a stake in India's future, and that future hinges on whether India can develop its economy and deliver for its population--now the...

Liliana Doganova, "Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Forest fires, droughts, and rising sea levels beg a nagging question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? Dr. Liliana Doganova’s book D...

Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society" (Princeton UP, 2019)

05 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange...

Renée Bergland, "Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for p...

Sheilagh Ogilvie, "The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guilds were prominent in medieval and early modern Europe, but their economic role has seldom been studied. In The European Guilds: An Economic Analys...

George R. Boyer, "The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain" (Princeton UP, 2019)

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The creation of the postwar welfare state in Great Britain did not represent the logical progression of governmental policy over a period of generatio...

Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Gr...

Héctor Beltrán, "Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands" (Princeton UP, 2023)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands (Princeton UP, 2023), Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal...

Guido Alfani, "As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West" (Princeton UP, 2023)

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This provocative and interesting book has received considerable attention. Roaring reviews and interviews include  The Financial Times (UK), The...

Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, "The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: The Complete English Translation" (Princeton UP, 2022)

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki, the monumental Sanskrit epic of the life of Rama, ideal man and incarnation of the great god Visnu, has profoundly af...

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, "Puerto Rico: A National History" (Princeton UP, 2024)

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have c...

Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist Melvin L. Rogers has a deep and rich new book delving into the work of a host of different African American political thinkers. But...

Grazia Ting Deng, "Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why and how local coffee bars in Italy--those distinctively Italian social and cultural spaces--have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas sin...

Eric Schwitzgebel, "The Weirdness of the World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"What's life for if there's no time to play and explore?" In The Weirdness of the World (Princeton UP, 2024), Eric Schwitzgebel invites the reader t...

Claudia de Rham, "The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Claudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soa...

Ya-Wen Lei, "The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China" (Princeton UP, 2023)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese state has increasingly shifted away from labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing to a process of socioeconomic...

Marc-William Palen, "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid...

Beth Linker, "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2024)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century's worth of nude "posture" photos of college stu...

Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti, "Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids" (Princeton UP, 2019)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, America...

Colin Elliott, "Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that s...

Myisha Cherry, "Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From religion to popular culture, institutions and people have shaped how we conceive forgiveness. Myisha Cherry, associate professor of philosophy, a...

Julie Kalman, "The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond" (Princeton UP, 2023)

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish mer...

Korey Garibaldi, "Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2023), Korey Garibaldi explores i...

Thomas J. Barfield, "Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History" (Princeton UP, 2023)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Empires are one of the most common forms of political structure in history—yet no empire is alike. We have our “standard” view of empire: perhap...

Verity Harding, "AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI's power grows, so does the need to figure out what--and who--this...

Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019)

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsid...

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, "Post-Imperial Possibilities: Eurasia, Eurafrica, Afroasia" (Princeton UP, 2023)

18 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can territory and peoples be organized? After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturall...

Richard L. Hasen, "A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout history, too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to voting. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, wh...

Despina Stratigakos, "Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway" (Princeton UP, 2020)

11 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investi...

Nicholas Dames, "The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century" (Princeton UP, 2023)

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Dr. Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing ho...

Matthew D. Lassiter, "The Suburban Crisis: White America and the War on Drugs" (Princeton UP, 2023)

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most accounts of post-1950s political history tell the story of of the war on drugs as part of a racial system of social control of urban minority pop...

Ismar Volić, "Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What's the best way to determine what most voters want when multiple candidates are running? What's the fairest way to allocate legislative seats to d...

Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...

Cornelia Woll, "Corporate Crime and Punishment: The Politics of Negotiated Justice in Global Markets" (Princeton UP, 2023)

23 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decade, many of the world’s biggest companies have found themselves embroiled in legal disputes over corruption, fraud, environmental ...

Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)

12 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...

John Quiggin, "Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly" (Princeton UP, 2019)

10 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Trying to follow the key macroeconomic debates that are swirling around DC, CNBC, the WSJ and the NYT? If you are but don't want to go back to graduat...

Timothy Brook, "The Price of Collapse: The Little Ice Age and the Fall of Ming China" (Princeton UP, 2023)

04 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ming China in 1642 had suffered a series of disasters. Floods, and then drought had destroyed successive rice crops, sending the price of grain to ast...

Gabriel Abend, "Words and Distinctions for the Common Good: Practical Reason in the Logic of Social Science" (Princeton UP, 2023)

02 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How social scientists' disagreements about their key words and distinctions have been misconceived, and what to do about it Social scientists do resea...

Adam Mestyan, "Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East" (Princeton UP, 2023)

01 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2023), Adam Mestyan (Duke Uni...

Yaron Eliav, "A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean" (Princeton UP, 2023)

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterra...

Katherine D. Van Schaik, "How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness" (Galen) (Princeton UP, 2024)

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. A talented...

How to Build a Career: A Discussion with Ben Wildavsky

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode of the Academic Life, we dive into the book The Career Arts: Making the Most of College, Credentials, and Connections (Princeton UP,...

Peter Brown, "Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History" (Princeton UP, 2023)

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past seven decades, Peter Brown has transformed our collective understanding of the late Roman Empire and the European Middle Ages alike, est...

Tristan G. Brown, "Laws of the Land: Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China" (Princeton UP, 2023)

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to another episode of New Books in Chinese Studies. I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and I am speaking today to Prof. Tristan Brown about his ...

Anna M. Grzymała-Busse, "Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State" (Princeton UP, 2023)

03 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton University Press, 2023), political scientist Anna Grzymała...

Coleen T. Murphy, "How We Age: The Science of Longevity" (Princeton UP, 2023)

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

All of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Colee...

Russ Castronovo, "American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability" (Princeton UP, 2023)

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacy. For more than three ...

Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea" (Princeton UP, 2023)

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastr...

Henrietta Harrison, "The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire" (Princeton UP, 2021)

28 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton UP, 2021) is a fascinati...

Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor, "Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society" (Princeton UP, 2016)

18 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Princeton University Press’ Our Compelling Interests series focuses on diversity, in racial, gender, socioeconomic, religious, and other forms. S...

Beatriz Nascimento, "The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil's Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whos...