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New Books Network

Interviews with Authors about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

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All Episodes

56:49

Jonathan Wilson, "The Power and the Glory: The...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

As the world prepares for the 2026 World Cup, Jonathan Wilson’s new book, The Power and the Glory: The History of the World Cup (Bold Type Books, 2025), presents a new history of what has become the greatest celebration of humanity on earth, and reveals how the World Cup has grown hand in hand with the political, economic, and social forces of our time. Since 1930, the World Cup has become a truly global obsession. It is the most watched sporting event on the planet, and 211 teams competed to make

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37:58

Oren Harman, "Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

A search for the meaning of one of nature's greatest riddles: why do so many creatures transform? “How many creatures walking on this earth / Have their first being in another form?” the Roman poet Ovid asked two thousand years ago. He could not have known the full extent of the truth: today, biologists estimate a stunning three-quarters of all animal species on Earth undergo some form of metamorphosis.But why do tadpoles transform into frogs, caterpillars into butterflies, elvers into eels,

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53:33

Peer Schouten, "Roadblock Politics: The Origins of...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

Peer Schouten, of the Danish Institute for International Studies, has written a breathtaking book. Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (Cambridge, 2022). Schouten mapped more than 1000 roadblocks in both the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In so doing, he illuminates the relationship between road blocks and what he calls “frictions of terrain” (p 262). These frictions demonstrate how rebels, locals and state security forces interact in the

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60:33

Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

In December 2025, writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall spoke with New Books Network host, Sullivan Summer, about her book, A Protest History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2025). Little did Browne-Marshall and Summer know that, at the time of the book’s paperback release in early 2026, the nation would be in the midst of widespread and ongoing protests.So Browne-Marshall is

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43:20

Ashlyn Hand, "Prioritizing Faith: International...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 formally established the promotion of religious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy and national security priority. Tracing its origins and passage, Prioritizing Faith: International Religious Freedom and U.S. Foreign Policy (NYU Press, 2025) by Dr. Ashlyn Hand shows how the legislation was made possible by the convergence of growing evangelical and Jewish advocacy, the expanding international human rights movement, and a broader search for post–Cold War

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57:13

Linda Connolly and Tina O’Toole, "Documenting Irish...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

Linda Connolly is a professor of sociology at Maynooth University, with research focusing on gender, Irish society, family studies, migration, and Irish studies. Dr Tina O'Toole is a literary scholar with research expertise in Irish and diasporic writing, gender studies, and the history of sexualities; she is a senior lecturer at the University of Limerick. In this interview, they discuss their well-known text Documenting Irish Feminisms, first published in 2005 and now re-released. Documenting

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35:47

Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone Demosthenes of 4th-century BCE Athens to the recent controversies regarding Donald Trump. In Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (Basic Books, 2022), Mchangama argues that the history of freedom of thought has recurrent themes, such as a free speech entropy: the perception of rulers or governments that if speech is not restricted

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60:34

Mel Rosenberg, "Emily Saw A Door" (Random House...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/08

Michelle Knudsen, celebrated author of over fifty children's books (and a personal favorite) agreed to interview Mel Rosenberg on the eve of publication of the North American version of Emily Saw A Door (Orit Magia, illustrator, Random House Studio, Feb. 24th, 2026), Mel's debut picture book overseas. We talk about how Emily Saw A Door came to be, the author's journey and process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member

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36:38

Todd Cleveland, "Africa and the Olympics: Winning...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (held in 2021 due to COVID-19), the fifty-four African countries that participated finished the tournament with the lowest medal haul for any continent, continuing a historic trend since the inception of the modern Games in 1896. Reflecting this relative lack of sporting success, African Olympians—aside from elite Kenyan distance runners—rarely register in the minds of even the most dedicated followers of the Games. Yet for all their seeming invisibility on the

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38:59

Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

At the heart of cybersecurity lies a paradox: Cooperation makes conflict possible. In Age of Deception (Cornell University Press 2025), Jon R. Lindsay shows that widespread trust in cyberspace enables espionage and subversion. While such acts of secret statecraft have long been part of global politics, digital systems have dramatically expanded their scope and scale. Yet success in secret statecraft hinges less on sophisticated technology than on political context. To make sense of this, Lindsay

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42:45

Bill Kopp, "What's the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

As long as there has been music, the form has been used as a vehicle for storytelling. Artists who have something to say often find that putting it into music is the ideal means of communicating thoughts and feelings to others. And the concept-album form is a logical extension of that storytelling impulse, often writ large. It allows the writer to tackle bigger themes, more involved story lines, more finely textured characters and ideas. In the pages of What’s the Big Idea? (Hozac, 2025), author

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55:38

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction"...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism? Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2022) provides a new point of departure for our understanding of anarchism. Prichard describes anarchism as a lived set of practices, with a rich historical legacy, and shows how anarchists have inspired and criticised some of our most cherished values and concepts, from

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42:54

Hilary French, "Ballroom: A People’s History of...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

In the early twentieth century, American ragtime and the Parisian tango fuelled a dancing craze in Britain. Public ballrooms were built throughout the country, providing a glamorous setting for dancing. The new English style, defined in the 1920s and followed by the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1930s, ensured that ballroom dancing continued to be the most popular British pastime until the 1960s, rivalled only by cinema. Ballroom: A People's History of Dancing (Reaktion, 2022) by

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50:48

Ann Komaromi, "Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Cornell UP, 2022) traces the emergence and development of samizdat, a significant and distinctive phenomenon of the late Soviet era that provided an uncensored system for making and sharing texts. In bringing together research into the underground journals, bulletins, art folios, and other periodicals produced in the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, Ann Komaromi reveals how samizdat helped to foster new forms of imagined community among

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71:31

Rosina Buckland and Oleg Benesch, "Samurai" (British...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

Samurai (British Museum Press 2026) is a richly illustrated volume co-authored by exhibition curator Rosina Buckland (British Museum) and Oleg Benesch (York) to accompany the special exhibition "Samurai" at the British Museum 3 Feb - 4 May 2026. More than a catalogue, Samurai uses the exhibit to explore the overlapping and diverging myths and histories of the samurai from medieval warriors to bureaucrats to global pop culture phenomena. As the exhibition website observes, "The samurai is an iconic

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70:35

Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet to develop “racial literacy.” Through both wide social influences and specific professional pressures, Shakespearean critics have been taught to ignore, suppress, and explain away the racial thinking of the plays, a set of evasion strategies that inevitably have political and social ramifications in the contemporary United States. As Ian writes

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60:05

A. Bagliani and N, Şenocak, "A People's Church:...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/07

A People's Church brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and institutions in medieval Italy. Each essay treats a single theme as broadly as possible, highlighting both the unique aspects of medieval Christianity on the Italian peninsula and the beliefs and practices it shared with other Christian societies. Because of its long tradition of communal self-governance, Christianity in medieval Italy, perhaps more

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54:32

Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/06

The first biography of the revolutionary political prisoner who laid the foundation for contemporary abolitionist struggles and Black anarchism. A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre (AK Press, 2025) is a political biography of one of the most important revolutionary figures of the twentieth century in the United States. Martin Sostre (1923–2015) was a Black Puerto Rican from East Harlem who became a politicized prisoner and jailhouse lawyer, winning cases in the early

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27:02

Rob Gallagher, "Artgames after GamerGate" (Palgrave...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/06

Videogame culture is obsessed with development. But gaming is still widely associated with wasted time, squandered potential and backwards attitudes. Even as the average gamer grows older, the medium remains dogged by the same old question: when will videogames grow up? The Gamergate movement lent this question renewed urgency, launching attacks on feminists and “social justice warriors” that have come to be seen as a catalyst for the emergence of the alt-right and election of Donald Trump. Artgames

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63:20

Black Beryl: The Modern Remaking of Kundalini, with...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/06

Today host Pierce Salguero sits down with Marleen Thaler, a researcher at the University of Vienna and University of Graz. Together, we investigate the history of the transformation of Kundalini from a Hindu goddess resting at the base of the spine to her modern manifestation as a psychiatric syndrome. Along the way, we discuss the central importance of the Theosophical society, the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1970s, spiritual emergencies, and kundalini as a meeting point for religion and

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7,454 results

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