PODCAST

New Books with Miranda Melcher

New Books Network

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

arts books

All Episodes

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

40:40

Cat Dawson, "Monumental: How a New Generation of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/15

For centuries, monuments have telegraphed the values and origin myths of dominant culture in public space and on massive scale. They have signaled both who is part of a culture and who is not, often overlooking histories that complicate the stories they tell. Yet in the last 50 years in the United States, the role of monuments has changed significantly. Numerous historical monuments have been removed or toppled, bringing to the fore a long-repressed conversation about the relationship between the

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

50:12

Juliet Rix, "London's Statues of Women" (SafeHaven...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/14

No-one can fail to notice how many statues of Great Men there are around London: stern politicians, military generals, imperial adventurers . . . But what about women? As shown by Juliet Rix in London's Statues of Women (SafeHaven Books, 2025), women are surprisingly well represented amongst London’s statues. Recent years have seen new statues of Virginia Woolf in Richmond, Mary Wollstonecraft in Stoke Newington, even boxer Nicola Adams in Brent. But there are also groundbreaking statues

61:58

Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, "Bankers' Trust: How Social...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/14

Central bank cooperation during global financial crises has been anything but consistent. While some crises are arrested with extensive cooperation, others are left to spiral. Going beyond explanations based on state power, interests, or resources, in Bankers' Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse (Cornell University Press, 2025) Dr. Aditi Sahasrabuddhe argues that central bank cooperation—or the lack thereof—often boils down to ties of trust, familiarity, and goodwill between

37:17

Rosemary Goring, "Exile: The Captive Years of Mary,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/14

From the moment Mary, Queen of Scots set foot on English soil in 1568 until her execution at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February 1587, she was the prisoner of her cousin, Elizabeth I. Unlike Mary’s time on the Scottish throne, the dramatic events of these years – almost half her life – took place while she was a captive. But while trouble was perpetually simmering beyond her prison walls, within them Mary was constantly plotting. Only towards the end did she lose faith in returning to her homeland as

29:59

Andréa Becker, "Get It Out: On the Politics of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/14

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Highly performed yet overlooked, examining the paradox of hysterectomy begins to unravel the various problems with how we medically treat uteruses and the people who have them.Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy (NYU Press, 2025) by Dr

51:44

Aggie Hirst, "Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/13

A wargaming renaissance has been underway in the US military. Having proven to be the most effective recruitment tool of the 21st century, games have proliferated across all levels of the military's strategic, operational, training, and rehabilitation architecture. From board games to high-tech digital and virtual reality platforms, wargames enable milarites to learn lessons from the past, play out possible responses to current crises, and explore the effectiveness of future operations and

40:33

Andrew Herscher, "Under the Campus, the Land:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/12

In the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, Anishinaabe leaders granted land to a college where their children could be educated. At the time, the colonial settlement of Anishinaabe homelands hardly extended beyond Detroit in what settlers called the “Michigan Territory.” Four days after the Treaty of Fort Meigs was signed, the First College of Michigania was founded to claim the land that the Anishinaabeg had just granted. Four years later, the newly-chartered University of Michigan would claim this land. By

58:53

Ignacio G. Galán, "Furnishing Fascism: Modernist...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/12

Along with the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime, the interwar years in Italy also saw the widespread development of its modernist interior design and furnishing practices. While the regime’s politics were overtly manifest in monumental government architecture, Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Ignacio G. Galán examines the subtler yet effective role of household goods and decor in the cultivation of Italy’s exclusionary sense of

32:55

Kevin J. Tracey, "The Great Nerve: The New Science of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/12

The vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to the balance of appetite and digestion. Made up of 200,000 fibers, the vagus nerve sends thousands of electrical signals every second between your brain and your most important organs. Yet despite its essential role in life, important vagus nerve functions have eluded centuries of scientific investigation. Now neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Kevin Tracey

67:41

Tom Waidzunas et al., "Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/11

Over the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer professionals have organized to achieve greater inclusion into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This inclusion, however, has come at a cost. In the 1970s, these professionals sought to radically transform STEM fields by confronting the homophobia and sexism embedded within them. Instead, these fields became more corporatized and privatized, and STEM institutions and workspaces—particularly

55:34

Phil Tiemeyer, "Women and the Jet Age: A Global...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/11

Women and the Jet Age: A Global History of Aviation and Flight Attendants (Cornell University Press, 2025) is a global history of postwar aviation that examines how states nurtured airlines for competing political and economic goals during the Cold War. While previous histories almost exclusively stress US and Western European aviation progress, Dr. Phil Tiemeyer examines how smaller, poorer states in socialist Eastern Europe and in the postcolonial Global South utilized airlines of their own to

32:31

Kirstie Macleod, "The Red Dress: Conversations in...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/09

The Red Dress: Conversations in Stitch (Quickthorn, 2025), shares the deeper story of The Red Dress, its embroiderers and Kirstie Macleod's own story whilst opening up the wider issues the garment prompts for its audiences through thematic essays by individuals involved in the greater project on subjects such as empowerment, finding voice, feminism, community and healing trauma.This project offered a platform for people, mostly women, who are vulnerable and live in poverty to share their stories

69:21

Susan L. Carruthers, "Making Do: Britons and the...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/08

Imagine a world in which clothing wasn't superabundant – cheap, disposable, indestructible – but perishable, threadbare and chronically scarce. Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, a textile famine loomed. What would everyone wear as uniforms were discarded and soldiers returned home, Nazi camps were liberated, and millions of uprooted people struggled to subsist? In Making Do: Britons and the Refashioning of the Postwar World (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Dr. Susan L. Carruthers unpicks

45:35

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/06

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cultural meanings attached to the notion of an "ideal" family size. When statistics revealed a sustained drop in France's birthrate, pronatalist activists pushed for financial benefits, propaganda, and punitive measures to

55:00

Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/05

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the UK is shaped – and constrained – by the classifications we encounter every day.Looking across six systems – the police and the recording of hate crimes; dating apps and digital desire; outness in the film and television industry; borders and LGBTQ asylum seekers; health and fitness activities; and DEI initiatives in the workplace – Rainbow

53:29

Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/03

Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character allegations that label them as 'bad' women in need of control, or 'mad' women not to be trusted. Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Daanika Kamal explores why the subjectivities of women victims are constructed in particular ways, and how these subjectivities are

77:42

Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/02

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the mid-nineteenth century the balloon remained relatively unchanged and was no longer seen as the harbinger of a new era. Yet that all changed in the last third of the century, when following the traumatic Franco-Prussian War defeat, the balloon reemerged to become the modern artifact that captured the attention of many. Through this process, the balloon

67:00

Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/07/02

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait – were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj. It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian

1,023 results

New Books with Miranda Melcher

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Start The Breakthrough Full Audiobook Now, Thriller Fans!

thebookvoice.com

Get Hooked On The Life-Enhancing Full Audiobook Experience!

thebookvoice.com

西四五条

主播郑捕头

Podcast Patapoe

0d0a

On Mic Podcast

Jordan Rich