Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas
Episodes
Ümit Kurt, "The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province" (Harvard UP, 2021)
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ümit Kurt, born and raised in Gaziantep, Turkey, was astonished to learn that his hometown once had a large and active Armenian community. The Armeni...
Edward Slingerland, "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" (Hachette, 2021)
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since Noah exited the ark, human beings have been wanting to get drunk and high. Why? Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civil...
Sam Wineburg, "Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone)" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percentage of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-mean...
Seth M. Siegel, "Troubled Water: What's Wrong with What We Drink" (Thomas Dunne, 2020)
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There’s nothing more vital to survival than water. “Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!”, said the Ancient Mariner, in the poem by ...
Emmanuel Navon, "The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first all-encompassing book on Israel’s foreign policy and the diplomatic history of the Jewish people, The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic ...
Hillary Kaell, "Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States" (Princeton UP, 2020)
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Child sponsorship, originally a project of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, has become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raisin...
Danny Adeno Abebe, "From Africa To Zion" (Miskal, 2021)
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1984, in an unprecedented act of brotherhood, Israel airlifted thousands of persecuted and starving Ethiopian Jews from Africa to Israel. They had ...
Riaz Dean, "Mapping the Great Game: Explorers, Spies & Maps in 19th Century-Central Asia, India and Tibet" (Casemate, 2019)
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“A map is the greatest of all epic poems, its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.” --Gilbert Grosvenor The Great Game raged thr...
Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Cultural Disjunctions: Post-Traditional Jewish Identities" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The identity of contemporary Jews is multifaceted, no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God’s commandments. Indeed, the J...
Assaf Shelleg, "Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project" (Oxford UP, 2020)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project (Oxford UP, 2020) offers the first in-depth study of the development of art music in Israel fr...
Margaret MacMillan, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us" (Random House, 2020)
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither sh...
Pete Davis, "Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us have had this experience: browsing through countless options on Netflix, unable to commit to watching any given movie—and losing so much ...
Lydia Denworth, "Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant bu...
Randolph M. Nesse, "Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry" (Dutton, 2019)
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why do I feel bad? There is real power in understanding our bad feelings. With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish t...
Cary Nelson, "Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities" (AEN, 2021)
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
“Allying with a Hamas cell (on a Palestinian university campus) is not the same as joining the College Republicans at the University of Kansas...in ...
Scott Berkun, "How Design Makes the World" (2020)
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everything you use, from your home to your smartphone, from highways to supermarkets, was designed by someone. What did they get right? Where did they...
Melvin Konner, "Believers: Faith in Human Nature" (Norton, 2019)
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist's answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is a...
Eva Illouz, "The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations" (Oxford UP, 2019)
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people's lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone...
Jason Manning, "Suicide: The Social Causes of Self-Destruction" (U Virginia Press, 2020)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The conventional approach to suicide is psychiatric: ask the average person why people kill themselves, and they will likely cite depression. But this...
Paul Vallely, "Philanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg" (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2020)
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this magnum opus, Paul Vallely guides the reader on a journey through the history and meaning of giving in religion and society. Vivid with anecdot...
J. Jay Garfinkel, "Heirlooms : Memory and Cherished Objects" (One Family Foundation, 2020)
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone will lose someone they love at some point in their life; a spouse, a parent, or a child. Having to deal with the clothes or personal effects ...
N. Darshan-Leitner and S. M. Katz, "Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters" (Hachette, 2017)
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Covid-19 is the global threat that owns today’s headlines, but the threat of international and domestic terrorism is still very much with us. Specif...
David Nasaw, "The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War" (Penguin, 2020)
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1945, German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, putting an end to World War II in Europe. But the aftershocks of global military conflict...
Michael J. Sandel, "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" (FSG, 2020)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalle...
Adina Hoffman, "Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City" (FSG, 2017)
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A remarkable view of one of the world's most beloved and troubled cities, Adina Hoffman's Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City (FS...
S. L. Lewis and M. A. Maslin, "The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene" (Yale UP, 2018)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics--the old forces of nature--have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new ...
Mike Shanahan, "Ladders to Heaven: How Figs Shaped our History" (Unbound, 2016)
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers … rainforest royalty … more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, an...
Sumit Guha, "History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200-2000" (U Washington Press, 2019)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-histori...
Betty Rojtman, "The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought: A Longing for the Abyss (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) analyses a cultural phenomenon that goe...
Robert Plomin, "Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are" (MIT Press, 2019)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever felt, “Oh my God, I’m turning into my mother (or father)!” ? Robert Plomin explains why that happens in Blueprint: How DNA Makes ...
Joseph E. David, "Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why are we so concerned with belonging? In what ways does our belonging constitute our identity? Is belonging a universal concept or a culturally depe...
Eric Weiner, "The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Places" (Simon and Schuster, 2016)
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Living, as we do, in a time in which a U.S. president anoints himself “a very stable genius”, we are particularly appreciative of Eric Weiner, a f...
Armstrong Williams, "What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race" (Hot Books, 2020)
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What Black and White America Must Do Now: A Prescription to Move Beyond Race (Hot Books, 2020) explores the complexity of race and culture in the Uni...
Robert Kolker, "Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family" (Doubleday, 2020)
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family (Doubleday, 2020) is the story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of...
Alexander Kaye, "The Invention of Jewish Theocracy: The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The tension between secular politics and religious fundamentalism is a problem shared by many modern states. This is certainly true of the State of Is...
Rafael Medoff, "The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust" (JPS, 2019)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Like so many Americans, American Jews supported President Roosevelt. They adored him. They believed in him. They idolized him. Perhaps they shouldn’...
Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, "The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace" (All Point Books, 2020)
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with...
Paula Fredriksen, "When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation" (Yale UP, 2018)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Isr...
Fay Bound Alberti, "A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion" (Oxford UP, 2019)
14 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the global pandemic of Covid-19 arrived, public health experts in the U.S. and U.K. were warning of the epidemic of loneliness. Loneliness stea...
Stephan Talty, "The Good Assassin" (HMH, 2020)
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
History that reads like a thriller; The Good Assassin: How A Mossad Agent and a Band of Survivors Hunted Down The Butcher of Latvia (Houghton Miffli...
Pehr Granqvist, "Attachment in Religion and Spirituality: A Wider View" (Guilford Press, 2020)
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Attachment theory is a popular lens through which psychologists have examined human development and interpersonal dynamics. In Attachment in Religion...
Cailin O’Connor, "The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread" (Yale UP, 2018)
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The social dynamics of “alternative facts”: why what you believe depends on who you know Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do ...
Yael Tamir, "Why Nationalism?" (Princeton UP, 2019)
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Around the world today, nationalism is back—and it’s often deeply troubling. Populist politicians exploit nationalism for authoritarian, chauvinis...
Richard G. Tedeschi, "Posttraumatic Growth: Theory, Research and Applications" (Routledge, 2018)
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
During this global pandemic, many of us will experience trauma, which the authors define as a severely stressful life-altering event. A traumatic even...
Adrian J. Boas, "The Crusader World" (Routledge, 2015)
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Crusader World (Routledge, 2015), edited by Adrian J. Boas, is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusa...
Yaakov Katz, "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" (St. Martin's Press, 2019)
19 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With the world’s attention riveted to the nuclear threat from Iran, Yaakov Katz’s new book could not be more timely. In Shadow Strike: Inside Is...
Ayelet Hoffmann Libson, "Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2018) examines the emergence of self-knowledge as a determining legal consideration...
Benjamin Balint, "Jerusalem: City of the Book" (Yale UP, 2019)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we c...
Jerome Gellman, "The History of Evil from the Mid-Twentieth Century to Today: 1950-2018" (Routledge, 2018)
10 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” – Genesis 8:21 “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with...
Julia Neuberger, "Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Isn’t, Why It Matters" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2019)
16 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-Semitic incidents, ranging from vandalism through murder, are on the rise in Great Britain, and across Europe and North America. Julia Neuberger ...
Lyn Julius, "Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018)
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Who are the Jews from Arab countries? What were relations with Muslims like? What made Jews leave countries where they had been settled for thousands ...
Nir Eyal, "Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A former advisor to tech companies on how to make their products habit-forming, Nir Eyal found that his own smartphone use was adversely affecting h...
Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, "Teaching Empathy and Reconciliation In Midst Of Conflict" (Wasatia Press, 2016)
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Moderation in times of extremism is a revolutionary idea. It is a positive, courageous value, as opposed to a defeatist attitude. It is swimming ag...
Oren Harman, "Evolutions: Fifteen Myths That Explain Our World" (FSG, 2018)
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“There are only two ways to live your life,” said Albert Einstein, “One is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is ...
Rachel Werczberger, "Jews in The Age Of Authenticity: Jewish Spiritual Renewal In Israel" (Peter Lang, 2016)
01 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps there’s something in the air in the Middle East, something that elevates spirituality. The Middle East, particularly Israel, is the legendar...
Seth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019)
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even...
Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
12 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hipp...
Lynn Kaye, "Time In The Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imagined Times in Jewish Law and Narrative" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The great writer Jorge Luis Borges said, “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tig...
David Resnick, "Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Thought, Settings and Issues" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Resnick combines two of his passions, movies and education, in his book, Representing Education In Film: How Hollywood Portrays Educational Th...
Naftali Rothenberg, "Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is love between man and woman the source of wisdom and the cornerstone of moral life? Naftali Rothenberg says it is, based on the works and life of ...