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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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42:50

Tom Arnold-Forster, "Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/27

From the years before World War I until the late 1960s, the journalist and political theorist Walter Lippmann was one of the most influential writers in the United States of America.His words and ideas had a powerful impact on American liberalism and his writings on the media are still taught today. Lippmann is now the subject of Tom Arnold-Forster’s Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton UP, 2025). Arnold-Forster explores Lippmann in his evolving historical context, from the

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44:50

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

New Books in Intellectual History ·

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

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38:48

Nick Spencer, "The Landscapes of Science and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/24

The relationship between science and religion has long been a heated debate and is becoming an ever more popular topic. The scientific capacity to manipulate and change humans and their environment through genetic engineering, life extension, and AI is going to take a huge leap forward in the twenty-first century, provoking endless debates around humans “playing God”. But what do we mean by this? Asking this question is surprisingly hard work. Attempts to 'essentialise' science, let alone religion,

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77:58

Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/24

It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him from the Islamic tradition, and specifically Sufi mysticism. In Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (Yale University Press, 2018), Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, places Jalal al-Din alongside luminaries within the rich archive of Islamic Sufi poetry. In

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46:39

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

New Books in Intellectual History ·

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

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74:55

Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/23

Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and ‘the father of English history’. It examines his notable feats, including calculating the first tide-tables; playing a role in the creation of the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Lindisfarne Gospels; writing the earliest extant Old English poetry and the earliest translation of part of the Bible into English; and composing his famous Ecclesiastical

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68:31

Vinay Lal, "Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/21

The anthology presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished Gandhian scholars contribute to this collection, setting it apart from similar compilations by focusing not just on Gandhi's impact or the debate over his relevance, but on maintaining his bold ethical ideals and progressive views in an era of skepticism. The essays delve into Gandhi's comprehensive dissection of political logic, his concept of

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46:38

Catherine Malabou, "Stop Thief!: Anarchism and...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/20

Why do so many philosophers value anarchy but refuse to call themselves anarchists? Why don’t philosophers draw on the classical anarchist tradition? How can we think de facto anarchism as distinct from dawning anarchism? What is at stake in doing so? Does philosophy need anarchism? To answer these questions, in Stop Thief! Anarchism and Philosophy (Polity Books, 2023), Catherine Malabou reads submerged counter-revolutionary themes in the texts of several key philosophical thinkers. By doing so,

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56:55

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/20

In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the kabbalistic cosmology underlying Western sex magic. Drawing extensively on Jewish myth and ritual, Segol tells the powerful story of the relationship between the divine and the human body in late antique Jewish esotericism, in medieval kabbalah, and in New Age ritual practice. Kabbalah and Sex Magic traces the evolution of a Hebrew microcosm that

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64:04

Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/19

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re hearing an awful lot about the fraught relationship between science and media. In his book, News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), historian of science Joshua Nall shows us that a blurry boundary between science and journalism was a key feature—not a bug—of the emergence of modern astronomy.Focusing on objects and media, such as newspapers, encyclopedias, cigarette cards, and

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44:32

Rob Goodman, "Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/19

Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero – and his predecessors, rivals, and successors – political theorist and former speechwriter Rob

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43:30

Raphael Cormack, "Holy Men of the Electromagnetic...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/18

An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s. The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind readers, and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, Raphael Cormack follows two of

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56:45

José Vergara, "All Future Plunges to the Past: James...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/18

All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature (Cornell UP, 2021) explores how Russian writers from the mid-1920s on have read and responded to Joyce's work. Through contextually rich close readings, José Vergara uncovers the many roles Joyce has occupied in Russia over the last century, demonstrating how the writers Yury Olesha, Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, and Mikhail Shishkin draw from Joyce's texts, particularly Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, to address the

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80:58

Nabil Yasien Mohamed, "Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/17

Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology.Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty (Routledge, 2024) looks at Ghazālī’s attitude to philosophical demonstration and Sufism as a means to certainty. In early scholarship surrounding Ghazālī, he has often been blamed as

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51:50

Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/17

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China's path. In the first post-Mao decade, China's reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization - but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy

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55:34

Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx"...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/16

The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Theological Metaphors of Marx, Enrique Dussel provides a groundbreaking combination of Marxology, theology, and ethical theory. Dussel shows that Marx unveils the theology of capitalism in his critique of commodity fetishization. Capitalism constitutes an idolatry of the commodity that undergirds the capitalist expropriation of labor. Dussel examines Marx’s

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46:54

Liz Fischer, "Network Analysis for Book Historians:...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/15

Researchers and archivists have spent decades digitizing and cataloguing, but what does the future hold for book history? Network Analysis for Book Historians: Digital Labour and Data Visualization Techniques (ARC Humanities Press, 2025) explores the potential of network analysis as a method for medieval and early modern book history. Through case studies of the Cotton Library, the Digital Index of Middle English Verse, and the Pforzheimer Collection, Liz Fischer offers a blueprint for drawing on

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75:23

David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/14

The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” is consuming conservative America. The mounting attacks on a once-obscure legal theory are upending public schooling, legislating censorship, driving elections, and cleaving communities. In this much-needed response, renowned scholar David Theo Goldberg cuts to the heart of the claims expressed in these attacks. He punctures the demonization of Critical Race

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68:47

Vinay Lal, "India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/14

The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize the dominant knowledge frameworks, and understand how the intellectual and cultural resources of Indian civilization may be deployed to think both, about some problems in contemporary politics and culture, and to introduce greater plurality into

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94:03

Federico Marcon, "Fascism: The History of a Word" (U...

New Books in Intellectual History ·

2025/08/11

The rise and popular support for authoritarianism around the world and within traditional democracies have spurred debates over the meaning of the term “fascist” and when and whether it is appropriate to use it. The landmark study Fascism: The History of a Word (The University of Chicago Press, 2025) takes this debate further by tackling its most fundamental questions: How did the terms “fascism” and “fascist” come to be in the first place? How and in what circumstances have they been used? How can

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