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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

57:43

Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of Stevan Harrell's An Ecological History of Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2023), a comprehensive account of China's transformation since the founding of the People's Republic from the perspective not of the economy but of the biophysical world. Examples throughout illustrate how

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40:58

Margo LaPierre, "Ajar" (Guernica Editions, 2025)

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Margo LaPierre about her poetry collection, Ajar (Guernica Editions, 2025). The poems in Ajar navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn’t the opposite of reality—it’s another perceptual system. If neurotypical thought measures the world in centimetres, this collection measures it in inches, gallons, amperes. Ajar celebrates radical recovery from gendered violence

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62:27

Danielle N. Boaz, "Voodoo: The History of a Racial...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--real or imagined--among people of African descent. "Voodoo" is one way that white people have invoked their anxieties and stereotypes about Black people--to call them uncivilised, superstitious, hypersexual, violent, and cannibalistic. In Voodoo: The History of a Racial Slur (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Danielle N. Boaz explores public perceptions

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53:53

Vanessa R. Sasson, "The Gathering: A Story of the...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

Vanessa R. Sasson's book The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (Equinox, 2023) is a retelling of the story of the first Buddhist women's request for ordination. Inspired by the Therigatha and building on years of research and experience in the field, Sasson follows Vimala, Patachara, Bhadda Kundalakesa, and many others as they walk through the forest to request full access to the tradition. The Buddha's response to this request is famously complicated; he eventually accepts women into

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59:36

The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

TCP’s inaugural episode features Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao, two scholars whose academic work and activism have helped to set the parameters of the contemporary debate on caste. In our conversation, we addressed the challenge of defining caste, their individual pathways into researching and writing on the caste question, and the virtues and limitations of comparing caste and race as two enduring forms of social stratification. We ended with a discussion of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of

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80:15

Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of...

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expanded Baltimore’s law enforcement into a vast network designed to oppress Black people. Michael Casiano’s history charts the institutional consolidation of the city’s post–Civil War police state. Authorities in Baltimore organized and established municipal power in distinct but connected sites that included jails, areas of political and social activism,

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28:59

Jeremy Black, "The Revolutionary War" (St....

New Books Network ·

2026/02/01

Military historian Jeremy Black follows his engagement with the American Civil War (St. Augustine's Press, 2025) with a review of the Revolutionary War in North America and the strategic asymmetry it presents. This was a key episode for global affairs and formative for the United States, but also fascinating for military history as a whole. Black's earlier treatment of this war (1991) remains operational, but he thought it "necessary to revisit the subject and reconsider not only the specifics of

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60:11

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting. Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500 (Harvard UP, 2023) takes as its

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63:18

Mark Harrison, "Secret Leviathan: Secrecy and State...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

The Soviet Union was one of the most secretive states that ever existed. Defended by a complex apparatus of rules and checks administered by the secret police, the Soviet state had seemingly unprecedented capabilities based on its near monopoly of productive capital, monolithic authority, and secretive decision making. But behind the scenes, Soviet secrecy was double-edged: it raised transaction costs, incentivized indecision, compromised the effectiveness of government officials, eroded citizens'

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42:35

Gaoheng Zhang, "Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas:...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities (Fordham UP, 2025) by Dr. Gaoheng Zhang designs a novel analytical framework to approach transcultural food mobilities, a culinary phenomenon that has been with us for decades as a result of colonialism and globalization.Why is it surprising for some of us to read the pairing of “Chinese” with “pizzas” and “Italian” with “dumplings,” such as proposed in the book’s title? After all, in some regions of the two countries, Italians eat

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53:02

Princess Joy L. Perry, "This Here Is Love" (W.W....

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

Three people—two enslaved, one indentured—living beside each other, struggling against their circumstances, trying to bend destiny.As the seventeenth century burns to a close in Tidewater, Virginia, America’s character is wrought in the fires of wealth, race, and freedom. Young Bless, the only child left to her enslaved mother, stubbornly crafts the terms of her vital existence. She stands as the lone bulwark between her mother and irreparable despair, her mother’s only possibility of hope, as

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36:54

John L. Rudolph, "Why We Teach Science (and Why We...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

Today I talked to John L. Rudolph about his book Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should) (Oxford UP, 2023). Few people question the importance of science education in American schooling. The public readily accepts that it is the key to economic growth through innovation, develops the ability to reason more effectively, and enables us to solve the everyday problems we encounter through knowing how the world works. Good science teaching results in all these benefits and more -- or so we think. But

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43:09

Peter Stansky, "The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics. In this study, Stanford historian and lifelong Orwell scholar Peter Stansky incisively

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30:15

Federico Alvarez Igarzábal and Emmanuel Guardiola,...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

How do video games and mental health intersect from the perspectives of psychology and game design? In recent years, the topic of mental health has gained tremendous importance for the games industry, affecting both the applied and entertainment games sectors. The former draws from established practices in diagnostics, digital medicine, therapy, and self-help to develop innovative and accessible tools; the latter follows in the tradition of games d'auteur, addressing the topic of mental health from

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35:49

Nathan Munier, "Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State,...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

What happens when states experience a rapid increase in resource wealth? This book examines the significant diamond find in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006, possibly the largest in over 100 years, and its influence on the institutional trajectory of the country. In Zimbabwe's Diamond Trade: The State, Resource Politics and Development (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Nathan Munier examines how this rapid increase in resource production shaped the policies available to political actors, providing a fresh

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60:11

Peter H. Wilson, "Iron and Blood: A Military History...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

German military history is typically viewed as an inexorable march to the rise of Prussia and the two world wars, the road paved by militarism and the result a specifically German way of war. Peter Wilson challenges this narrative. Looking beyond Prussia to German-speaking Europe across the last five centuries, Wilson finds little unique or preordained in German militarism or warfighting. Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples Since 1500 (Harvard UP, 2023) takes as its

en

45:01

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/31

In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contributions and challenges of the white working class – and this obscures the ways in which Black workers built institutions like the railroads and universities – but also how they transformed unions, changed public policy, and established community. In Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (LIveright, 2023), Dr. Blair LM Kelley restores the Black

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46:38

Luis Rechani Agrait, "My Excellency: Comedy in Three...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/30

My Excellency: Comedy in Three Acts (Swan Isle Press, 2025) by Luis Rechani Agrait was translated into English by William Carlos Williams but not published in his lifetime. This first-ever edition of Williams’s translation was edited and has an introduction by Jonathan Cohen. It includes a foreword by Julio Marzán and an afterword by José Luis Ramos Escobar. It also includes the lecture Williams gave on poetry at the 1941 Inter-American Writers’ Conference of the University of Puerto Rico, where he

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49:17

Thomas Aiello, "Return of the King: The Rebirth of...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/30

Return of the King: The Rebirth of Muhammad Ali and the Rise of Atlanta (U Nebraska Press, 2025) tells the story of Muhammad Ali’s return to the ring in 1970, after a more than three-year suspension for refusing his draft notice as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. With Ali’s career still in doubt, he found new support in shifting public opinion about the war and in Atlanta, a city still governed by white supremacy, but a white supremacy decidedly different from that of its neighbor

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55:51

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in...

New Books Network ·

2026/01/30

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each country turned to different sets of authorities: from economists and psychoanalysts to priests and ordinary people. They even prized different types of expertise—empirical research in the United States versus abstract theory in France.Exploring the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States and

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