PODCAST

New Books with Miranda Melcher

New Books Network

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

arts books

All Episodes

59:18

Patrick Wallis, "The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/04/05

Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape

59:02

Nathalie Cooke, "Tastes and Traditions: A Journey...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/04/03

Menus are invaluable snapshots of the food consumed at specific moments in time and place. Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History (Reaktion, 2025) by Nathalie Cooke provides glimpses into the meals enjoyed by royalty and rogues, and by those celebrating special occasions or sampling new culinary sensations. It describes food prepared for the great and the good, meals served during sieges and tablescapes immortalized in art. It explores how menus entertain adults, link food with play

71:44

Sam Klug, "The Internal Colony: Race and the American...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/04/02

In The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. Sam Klug reveals the central but underappreciated importance of global decolonization to the divergence between mainstream liberalism and the Black freedom movement in postwar America. Dr. Klug reconsiders what has long been seen as a matter of primarily domestic policy in light of a series of debates concerning self-determination, postcolonial economic development, and the

47:33

Sally King, "Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/04/02

In Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female (Policy Press, 2025), Dr. Sally King interrogates the diagnostic label of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) to expose and challenge sexist assumptions within medical research and practice. She powerfully demonstrates how the concept of the ‘hormonal’ premenstrual woman is merely the latest iteration of the ‘hysterical’ female myth. By blaming the healthy reproductive body (first our wombs, now our hormones) for the female-prevalence of emotional

71:28

Sinem Arcak Casale, "Gifts in the Age of Empire:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/31

When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi’ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. In Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500–1639 (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Sinem Arcak

71:10

Philip Harling, "Managing Mobility: The British...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/31

Between 1840 and 1860 the British Empire expanded rapidly in scale, with rampant annexation of territory and ruthless suppression of rebellion. These decades also witnessed an unprecedented movement of people across the Empire and around the world, with over 2.6 million emigrants leaving Britain in the 1850s alone. Managing Mobility: The British Imperial State and Global Migration, 1840–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Philip Harling examines how the British imperial state facilitated

44:31

Peder Anker, "For The Love of Bombs: The Trail of...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/30

The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U.S. scholars. The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the nuke’s ‘father’, is repeatedly centre stage, as in the case of the recent film about him. These are elitist stories that more often than not ignore the suffering and violence of the bomb to laypeople in general, and to marginalised groups in particular.Starting with the gruesome mining of uranium by

61:11

Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq, "Savages and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/30

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State (University of Arizona Press, 2025) by Dr. Andrew Canessa & Dr. Manuela Lavinas Picq takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced. Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, this open-access book

52:55

Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/29

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterlife. But, as Dr. Rune Nyord shows in Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife (University of Chicago Press, 2025), even today, our understanding of the Egyptian afterlife has been formulated to a striking extent in Christian terms. Dr. Nyord argues that this is no accident, but rather the result of a long history

40:28

Liz William, "Rough Music: Folk Customs,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/29

Rough Music: Folk Customs, Transgression and Alternative Britain (Reaktion, 2025) by Liz Williams explores transgression and shame in British folklore and customs from ancient Britain to the present day. From Bonfire Night to Wassail, Morris dancing, Mari Lwyd and Twelfth Night, along with events like street football and the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, Liz Williams reveals the roots and roles of violence, mockery, protest and public shaming. She also looks at alternative culture and

55:31

Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/29

What happened to the loggers of America’s past when lumbermen moved west and south in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did these communities continue to create value and meaning in these marginal lands? Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest (West Virginia University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jason L. Newton provides a new perspective on the process of industrialization in America through the study of rural workers in a cutover landscape. Back when resources

50:28

David Oakeshott, "Schooling, Conflict and Peace in...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/26

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and peacebuilding into dialogue with education, Schooling, Conflict and Peace in the Southwestern Pacific: Becoming Enemy Friends (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. David Oakeshott examines the challenges youth and their teachers face in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands. Youth in these places must reconcile with the violent past of their parents’ generation while also learning how to live with people once on

70:46

Kiran Mehta, "To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/25

Imprisonment was rarely used as punishment in Britain before 1800. The criminal justice system was based on terror and deterrence, sentencing convicts to the gallows at home and transportation overseas, with prisons serving primarily as holding spaces for the accused until the case against them was resolved. A major shift began in the late eighteenth century when imprisonment became an end in itself: a means to reform as well as to discipline criminal offenders. To Detain or to Punish: Magistrates

64:25

James M. O’Toole, "For I Have Sinned: The Rise and...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/24

For generations, American Catholics went faithfully to confession, admitting their sins to a priest and accepting through him God’s forgiveness. The sacrament served as a distinctive marker of Catholic identity, shaping parishioners’ views of their relationship to God, their neighbors, and the wider world. But starting in the 1970s, many abandoned confession altogether. Focusing on the experiences of both laypeople and priests, in For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in

65:44

Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy, "Women...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/24

In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily. Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Mary Anne Hunting and Dr. Kevin D. Murphy tells the stories of the resilient and resourceful women who surmounted barriers of sexism, racism, and classism to take on crucial roles in the establishment and growth of Modernism across the United States. Dr

37:25

Adam Kotsko, "Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/24

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) by Dr. Adam Kotsko explores the beloved science fiction franchise’s repeated attempts to reinvent itself after the end of its 1990s golden age. Beginning with the prequel series Enterprise, Adam Kotsko analyzes the wealth of content set within Star Trek’s sprawling continuity—including authorized books, the three “Kelvin Timeline” films, and the streaming series Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and

69:09

Surekha Davies, "Humans: A Monstrous History" (U...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/23

Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science in Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous

55:30

Heather Akou, "Afterthought: A Family Story" (Indiana...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/22

Afterthought: A Family Story (Indiana University Bloomington Libraries Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Heather Akou focuses on the life of her grandmother, Lila Slaback, who grew up in a dysfunctional, working-class family in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the 1930s. In her short adult life, she gave birth to seven children with at least four different men and died in 1958 at age thirty-six. She was a real person, but her family was not proud of her story. This book is my best attempt to recover it.This work of

56:08

James Tejani, "A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/20

The Port of Los Angeles is all around us. Objects we use on a daily basis pass through it: furniture, apparel, electronics, automobiles, and much more. The busiest container port in the Western hemisphere, it claims one-sixth of all US ocean shipping. Yet despite its centrality to our world, the port and the story of its making have been neglected in histories of the United States. In A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America (WW Norton, 2024), historian

32:58

Clive Bloom, "London Uncanny: A Gothic Guide to the...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/03/18

From Kensington to the East End, under candlelight, gas lamp and then neon signs, London is both a bustling physical metropolis and a stirring psychic encounter. The most depraved depictions of London in fiction, film, poetry, television and theatre have irrevocably merged with the reality of its dark history, creating a phantasmagoria defined by murder, vice and the unnatural. In this panoptic look at the capital at its most eerie and macabre, Dr. Clive Bloom takes a tour of Gothic London's uncanny

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New Books with Miranda Melcher

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