PODCAST

New Books with Miranda Melcher

New Books Network

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

arts books

All Episodes

39:40

Tom White, "Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/23

Once used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing, asbestos has taken the lives of millions. Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster (Repeater, 2025) by Tom White traces the international history of the asbestos disaster — from mining operations in apartheid South Africa to the factories and shipyards of the UK – and tells the story of the activists and workers who took on a once indomitable industry.Illegal for the past quarter century, much asbestos still remains in place today,

44:53

Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/23

A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ethnography about an all-women motorcycle club (MC). She recounts stories of women bikers for whom riding in an MC is “an act of rebellion” and “liberating” even as it constrains—a reactionary populist version of the

49:00

Stephen D. Hopper, "Eucalyptus" (Reaktion, 2025)

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/23

Eucalypts, iconic to Australia, have shaped art, science and landscapes worldwide. With around nine hundred species, from towering giants to compact mallees, these trees inspire awe and curiosity. Their hardwood has driven industries, sparked protests and even toppled governments. Their aromatic leaves hold healing properties yet fuel devastating wildfires.Eucalyptus (Reaktion, 2025) by Professor Stephen Hopper blends Aboriginal knowledge and Western science to uncover the rich natural history,

44:30

Julie Dobrow, "Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/22

Like any set of star-crossed lovers, Elaine and Charles came from different worlds. Elaine, an acclaimed childhood poet from a remote corner of the Massachusetts Berkshires, traveled to the Dakota Territories to teach Native American students, undaunted by society’s admonitions. Charles, a Dakota Sioux from Minnesota, educated at Dartmouth and Boston University Medical School, was considered by his Euro-American mentors the epitome of an assimilated Indian. But when they met just ahead of the

46:50

David Chanoff, "Anthony Benezet: Quaker,...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/22

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world were galvanized by the moral power of a modest Quaker teacher who never ventured more than a few miles from his home in Philadelphia: Anthony Benezet. While Benezet was buried in an unmarked grave, his fingerprints are all over the extinction of the Atlantic slave trade and the gathering strength of America’s own burgeoning abolitionist

44:53

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/22

Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. Its meteoric rise and fall encapsulated the dynamics of the '80s and foreshadowed the seismic cultural shifts to come after the Cold War.In the West, its advent deepened the trends of the age: individualism, consumerism, the fragmentation of society, and the consolidation of corporate power in the

65:01

Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/21

Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Killian Clarke explains both why counterrevolutions emerge and when they are likely to succeed. He forwards a movement-centric argument that emphasizes the strategies

39:08

Margaret Grace Myers, "The Fight for Sex Ed: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/21

The US has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs—has been available since the 90s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and 22 states do not require sex ed in public schools at all. In The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine (Beacon Press, 2025), writer, advocate, and

56:40

Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/19

For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal

32:57

Emily Winderman, "Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/19

How did three words come to carry the weight of America's abortion debates? In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (JHU Press, 2025), Dr. Emily Winderman examines how this phrase shaped American reproductive politics and health care standards across generations. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book traces the unexpected origins of this rhetoric in urban reform movements, showing how early associations of alleys with sanitation, morality, and criminality created lasting impressions

68:27

Max Adams and Colm O’Brien, "Northumbria AD 367-867:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/18

The story of the lands between the Forth and Humber from the end of the Roman period to the Viking kingdom of York is one of the most richly fascinating in British history. This the age of Lindisfarne and of Bede; of the dramatic hills, valleys and ancient routeways that link the Irish Sea and the North Sea; of names that resonate even now: Edwin, Oswald, Hild, Cuthbert, Wilfrid; of conquest, conversion and the legacies of intellectual giants.Northumbria AD 367-867: Earth Hall, Ring Gift and

39:56

Michelle McSweeney, "OK" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/17

"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees). OK as an object, however, tells a story of how technology writes itself into language, permanently altering communication. OK (Bloomsbury, 2023), by Dr. Michelle McSweeney and published by Bloomsbury in 2023, explores this story OK is a young word, less than 200 years old. It began as an acronym for “all correct” when the steam-powered printing press

56:49

John Goodall, "The Castle: A History" (Yale UP, 2022)

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/17

In The Castle: A History (Yale University Press, 2022) Dr. John Goodall presents a vibrant history of the castle in Britain, from the early Middle Ages to the present day. The castle has long had a pivotal place in British life, associated with lordship, landholding, and military might, and today it remains a powerful symbol of history. But castles have never been merely impressive fortresses—they were hubs of life, activity, and imagination. Dr. John Goodall weaves together the history of the

41:40

Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/14

When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence?We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon, as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and war. In The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism is Shaping Modern Asia (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), acclaimed journalist Sonia Faleiro travels from Sri Lanka’s riot-scarred towns to the homes of

49:45

Tracy Borman, "The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/12

In the long and dramatic annals of British history, no transition from one monarch to another has been as fraught and consequential as that which ended the Tudor dynasty and launched the Stuart in March 1603. At her death, Elizabeth I had reigned for 44 turbulent years, facing many threats, whether external from Spain or internal from her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. But no danger was greater than the uncertainty over who would succeed her, which only intensified as her reign lengthened. Her

52:59

Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime:...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/04

While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and transferred injustice through political and financial architectures.In Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment (Bristol University Press/Policy Press, 2024) Dr. Joshua Castellino presents a five-point plan aimed at system redress through reparations that addresses the colonially induced climate crisis through

55:19

Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/03

In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in a post-1918 fight over the French past—a contingent and contradictory but always hard-charging struggle over a forgotten "heritage mandate." Many scholars, clergy, pundits, politicians, and investors perceived the moment Allied forces entered Jerusalem in December 1917 to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand French influence, evoking the vision

28:22

Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/03

Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an inevitable future-first comes the house, then a dog, then a child. But what if they are just cat people?Moving between memoir, philosophy, and pop culture, Cat (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a playful and tender meditation on cats and their people, part of the Object Lessons series. Van Laer considers cats' role in her personal narrative, where they are mascots

55:58

Graeme Rigby, "Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring"...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/03

Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring: Adventures with the King of Fishes (Hurst, 2025) by Graeme Rigby contains almost everything you didn’t know you needed to know about Atlantic herrings. (Pacific and Baltic varieties are in there too.) Herrings make the world bigger: with spawnings seen from space, a trillion individuals make this one of the tastiest and most abundant vertebrates on Earth.From ‘A Beginning’ to ‘Zuiderzee’, count the wars fought over herrings; don’t forget Scotland vs the Holy

45:45

Linda Upham-Bornstein, "'Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax...

New Books with Miranda Melcher ·

2025/11/02

During the Great Depression, the proliferation of local taxpayers’ associations was dramatic and unprecedented. The justly concerned members of these organizations examined the operations of state, city, and county governments, then pressed local officials for operational and fiscal reforms. These associations aimed to reduce the cost of state and local governments to make operations more efficient and less expensive. "Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender": Taxpayers’ Associations, Pocketbook

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New Books with Miranda Melcher

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