PODCAST

New Books with Miranda Melcher

New Books Network

A special series of interviews hosted by Dr. Miranda Melcher.

arts books

All Episodes

44:50

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, "God: An Anatomy" (Knopf,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/25

The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ. The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks and weeps and

46:39

Barbara H. Rosenwein, "Winter Dreams: A Historical...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/23

Winter Dreams: A Historical Guide to Old Age (Reaktion, 2025) is an evocative history of the ways the old have thought, felt and expressed themselves over two millennia, tracking the experience of ageing through artistic, literary and historical records. While old age is often depicted as ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’, Dr. Barbara H. Rosenwein shows that the elderly have always retained their emotional depth and desires. She explores how these have changed over time, as

63:38

Daniel Lomas, "The Secret History of UK Security...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/22

Using newly available government records, private papers, and documents obtained through Freedom of Information, The Secret History of UK Vetting from 1909 to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Daniel Lomas tells the secret story of UK security vetting from 1909 to the present. Although Britain avoided American-style red-baiting and McCarthy-like witch-hunts, successive UK governments have, like their 'Five Eyes' allies, implemented security procedures to protect government, defence and industry

67:31

Angela C. Tozer, "The Debt of a Nation: Land and the...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/22

You’ve got to speculate to accumulate. We apply that notion to individuals in pursuit of wealth, but what about countries? The Debt of a Nation: Land and the Financing of the Canadian Settler State, 1820–73 (U of British Columbia Press, 2025) is the first comprehensive history of Canada’s nineteenth-century public debt. Beginning in the 1820s, loans gave British North American settler governments access to unprecedented amounts of capital at low interest rates. The credit for such loans derived from

46:17

Mariya Grinberg, "Trade in War: Economic Cooperation...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/21

Trade between belligerents during wartime should not occur. After all, exchanged goods might help enemies secure the upper hand on the battlefield. Yet as history shows, states rarely choose either war or trade. In fact, they frequently engage in both at the same time.To explain why states trade with their enemies, in Trade in War: Economic Cooperation across Enemy Lines (Cornell UP, 2025) Dr. Mariya Grinberg examines the wartime commercial policies of major powers during the Crimean War, the two

55:38

Kathleen Wilson, "Strolling Players of Empire:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/21

Why did Britons get up a play wherever they went? In Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833 (Cambridge UP, 2022), Dr. Kathleen Wilson reveals how the performance of English theater and a theatricalized way of viewing the world shaped the geopolitics and culture of empire in the long eighteenth century. Ranging across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans to encompass Kingston, Calcutta, Fort Marlborough, St. Helena and Port

59:34

Reid B. C. Pauly, "The Art of Coercion: Credible...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/18

Strong states are surprisingly bad at coercion. History shows they prevail only a third of the time. Dr. Pauly argues that coercion often fails because targets fear punishment even if they comply. In this "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, targets have little reason to obey. The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Reid B. C. Pauly presents a fresh explanation for the success—and failure—of coercive demands in

40:08

Michael Hiltzik, "Golden State: The Making of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/17

California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, it captured the world’s imagination. We think of bearded prospectors lured by the promise of gold; we imagine its early embrace of immigrant labor during the railroad boom as prologue to its diverse social fabric today. But what lies underneath the myth is far more complicated.Thanks to extensive research by Michael Hiltzik, one of our longstanding

55:37

Adriana Carranca, "Soul by Soul: The Evangelical...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/16

US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to an extent of which many of us might be unaware. Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims (Columbia Global Reports, 2024) tells the story of Americans’ colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity “to the ends of the Earth,” a movement that triumphed in the Global South, challenged the Vatican, then turned east in full force after 9/11 to spread the Gospel among Muslims. When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq set off a

67:54

Kate Herrity, "Sound, Order and Survival in Prison:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/16

The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and work with it? Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown (Bristol UP, 2024) tells the story of a year spent with a UK prison community, bringing its social world vividly to life for the first time through aural ethnography. Dr. Kate Herrity’s sensory criminology challenges current thinking on how power is experienced by

39:52

Sandra Hempel, "Controlling Women: The Untold Story...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/15

Violence against women is out of control. Conviction rates for rape are so low that most survivors think it pointless to report, or later regret doing so. Ruthless trafficking gangs run the sex trade. Women have no confidence in the Metropolitan Police. The year is 1914.As the First World War began, a group of British campaigners founded the Women Police Volunteers, hoping to protect the vulnerable both from crime and from patriarchal policing and justice. The movement’s pioneers included a

50:30

Prudence Peiffer, "The Slip: The New York City Street...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/15

For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world. Coenties Slip, a dead-end street near the water, was home to a circle of wildly talented and varied artists that included Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist, Delphine Seyrig, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. As friends and inspirations to one another, they created a unique community

66:55

Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/08/09

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union.On their face, the mid-1950s negotiations over European integration were aimed at securing unity in order to prevent violent conflict and boost economies emerging from the disaster of

49:21

Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/26

Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a thoroughly researched assessment of how China’s economic success continues to be shaped by the communist ideology of Chairman MaoIt was long assumed that as China embraced open markets and private enterprise, its state-controlled economy would fall by the wayside, that free markets would inevitably lead to a more liberal society. Instead, China’s growth

50:31

Gabriel Ertsgaard, "A Fiction Writer’s Guide to...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/21

Superhero violence and graphic action sequences are prevalent on the screen and on the page, but this book takes an alternative route with practical guidance, frameworks, and tools for incorporating the principles of peacebuilding and nonviolence into compelling fiction. By mapping a path less travelled but just as vital in divisive times, in n A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Peace: Crafting Nonviolent Heroism (Bloomsbury, 2025) Dr. Gabriel Ertsgaard shows writers how they can enact nonviolent heroism

42:03

Meegan Kennedy, "Writing Embodiment in Victorian...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/18

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and

47:25

David Engerman, "Apostles of Development: Six...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/17

Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made (Oxford University Press and Penguin RandomHouse South Asia, 2025) by Dr. David Engerman recounts the work of six individuals, all former classmates at Cambridge University, who helped make international development--the effort to reduce poverty and inequality around the world--into a juggernaut of the second half of the twentieth century. International development employed millions, affected billions, and spent trillions; it held the

54:46

Haley Cohen Gilliland, "A Flower Traveled in My...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/16

In the early hours of March 24, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumble with tanks as soldiers seize the presidential palace and topple Argentina’s leader. The country is now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit approval from much of Argentina’s people, who are tired of constant bombings and gunfights, the junta swiftly launches the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso—a bland name

34:00

Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/16

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created by Hormel Foods in 1937 to utilize surplus pork shoulder during the Great Depression, SPAM became an essential resource during the Second World War, and helped shape perceptions of American culture. SPAM: A Global History (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Kelly Spring explores SPAM’s complex history, from its inception to its resurgence during the COVID-19

64:50

Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/15

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover that gym treadmills were pioneered on plantations or that denim jeans were once clothing for enslaved people, you can't help but ask where else the legacy of slavery hides in plain sight.Through the stories of thirty-nine everyday places and objects, in Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain – in 39 Institutions, People, Places and

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New Books with Miranda Melcher

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