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PODCAST

New Books in Intellectual History

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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64:24

James Loeffler, "Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/15

A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social media platforms—where we are not polarized over what counts as antisemitism, which speech

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32:13

Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: Thoughts on the...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/14

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, who eventually taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards.The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution

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62:50

Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/13

This is a really good book.Really good.Liberalism and the Reinvention of the Modern Corporation(Oxford UP, 2026)takes the reader on a fascinating, and perhaps unexpected, journey through Catholic hospitals, the expansion of the carceral state, and corporate and union access to the protections of First Amendment freedom of speech. All the while, Kathleen J. Frydl is rigorously constructing an understanding and positioning of the modern corporation within the governmental structures and protections of

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56:40

Why the Roman Empire Fell: On Edward Gibbon with Hugh...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/13

250 years ago when the United States declared independence, Edward Gibbon across the ocean published the first volume of his magisterial series,The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.Immediately his text caused a storm of controversy. Many readers thought that Gibbon had implied that the rise of Christianity caused the fall of the western empire. But is that the real story?To answer that question, in Episode 1 of Season 6, I have as our guestHugh Liebert. A Professor of Political Science at West

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31:13

Sima Qian–China’s Grand Historian

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/12

John Ross chats with repeat guest Tim McGirk about Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BC), the Father of Chinese History. He earned this accolade for his monumental work, theShiji(usually translated asRecords of the Grand Historian). It covers more than two thousand years, from the legendary early emperors up to Emperor Wu, under whom Sima Qian lived and fell afoul. Sima Qian would use his history writing to criticize cruel leaders, most notably Qin Shi Huang, the despotic first emperor of China, who burned books

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46:11

Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/12

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by the name "Maryam."The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries(Fortress Press, 2025)examines the varied appearances of Maryam in different Islamic cultural and theological contexts. The chapters in this history extend from Maryam's scriptural mentions in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, her appearances in medieval debates regarding

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51:24

Michael R. Griffiths, "The Death of the Author and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/12

The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)promisesto transform a decades old debate in literary studies about the relation between structure and agency, form and intention by giving a detailed account—previously unstudied—of the way colonized writers have responded to, learned from, and critiqued the death of the author postulate declared by Roland Barthes in 1967. The book is a cultural history of these debates—with a particular focus on two crucial two key

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66:22

Jarvis C. McInnis, "Afterlives of the Plantation:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/12

Built on the grounds of a former cotton plantation, the Tuskegee Institute, founded byBooker T. Washington, offered agricultural and industrial education as a strategy forBlack self-determination. There―and in many other communities in the U.S. South, theCaribbean, and Central America―Black people repurposed and regenerated what hadbeen a place of enslavement into a site for imagining alternative futures. Jarvis C. McInnis charts a new account of Black modernity by centering

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42:20

William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone,...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/11

We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped dorm rooms and musty library stacks, gothic towers and freshly mowed quads. The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood(Harvard University Press, 2026) puts such seemingly inconsequential details at the

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56:11

Marisa Karyl Franz, "Near and Desired Things:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/09

Near and Desired Things: Shamanism in Late Imperial Local Siberian Museums(Cornell University Press, 2026) reveals nineteenth-century Siberian museums, built on Indigenous land and increasingly populated by political exiles, as active sites of ethnographic knowledge-making and centers of scientific research, regional identity, and colonial authority. Rather than collecting from distant colonies, these institutions concentrated on surrounding communities, their tools, beliefs, and everyday lives, to

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75:28

Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/08

The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s.Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home. Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation

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43:12

Andres Saenz de Sicilia, "Subsumption in Kant, Hegel...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/07

Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Societyis the latest book from Dr Andres Saenz De Sicilia, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. Andres’ excellent title, published with Brill and released in soft cover with Haymarket Books late last year, is an in-depth exploration of the concept of subsumption as it appears in the works of three great thinkers, and the relevance of the paradigm for modern critical theory.In this

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86:31

Giulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/07

Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World (Princeton University Press, 2026) reclaims this idea as the path to sustaining our life together on a changing planet, reframing our relationship to the environment not as a constraint on liberty but as its republican foundation. Giulio Boccaletti

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46:16

Vaneesa Cook, "Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/08/01

In Empire and Liberty: The Tied Histories of Two American Landmarks(Beacon Press, 2026),historian Dr. Vaneesa Cook examines the history of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty in order to consider, more broadly, the United States' relationship with liberty and empire. Empire and liberty have been part of the American story since the founding, but they are often at odds, sometimes irreconcilably so. Cook examines their changing relationship and meaning using these two iconic buildings

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33:29

Mikhail Pelevin, "Love, Honour and God: Pashto...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/31

In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Mikhail Pelevin about his book Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times (Iran and the Caucasus Monographs, vol. 5, Brill, 2025). Love, Honour and God is a survey of three centuries of Pashto literary and educational writing, from roughly 1530 to 1830, the period Pelevin identifies as classical in the history of Pashto letters. Moving from the earliest, now-lost administrative "Daftar" of Shaykh Mali through the sectarian

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0:00

Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/30

Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book,American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism(Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christianity has waxed and waned through a series of revivals, migrations, and challenges from alternative faiths like

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41:40

Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont eds., "Ba‘thist Iraq...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/29

The opening of Iraq's Ba'thParty archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history, offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of the world's most impenetrable autocracies. Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (Stanford University Press, 2026) edited by Dr. Lisa Blaydes and Dr. Samuel Helfont brings together leading scholars to take stock of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'thist

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0:00

Two Revolutionary Jews: Leon Trotsky and Chaim...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/29

When Jews plunged into the world of politics en masse at the beginning of the 20th century, a variety of new options were available to them. Two of the leading figures who proffered novel, but opposing political avenues to the Jewish masses were Dr. Chaim Zhitlowsky and Leon Trotsky. Zhitlowsky, a founder of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party, offered a synthesis of socialism and Yiddish nationalism. Trotsky, a leading Russian Social Democrat, formulated a strict version of internationalism

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0:00

Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/25

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas

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42:47

Mikuláš Pešta, "Student Internationalism and the...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2026/07/24

In this episode of the CEU Review of Books Podcast, I sat down with Mikuláš Pešta to talk about his new book,Student Internationalism and the Global Cold War: The International Union of Students in Socialist Prague(Bloomsbury, 2026). During our discussion we touched upon how the International Union of Students ended up being headquartered in Prague, the organisation's various activities, and the life of the Secretariat, amongst other topics. You can purchase the book from Bloomsburyhere. The book

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