NBN Book of the Day

01:09:44

The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism,...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/08

When American fascists suddenly goose-stepped down Main Street in the 1930s, fascism was seen by the rest of the country as a terrifying and radical new European import. It was not. It didn’t come from abroad. Nor was it new or radical. The seed of American fascism was planted by elite southern planters who insisted that slavery need not be addressed in the Constitution because it would soon die out on its own.In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915(Bloomsbury, 2026),

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00:43:23

Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions with Elizabeth...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/07

What does it mean to learn when algorithms increasingly shape how knowledge is produced, organized, and interpreted? Editors Elizabeth de Freitas, Matthew X. Curinga, and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román join Shreya Urvashi to talk about their book Learning Under Algorithmic Conditions(U Minnesota Press, 2026), a collection that examines how artificial intelligence and computational systems are changing education, cognition, and ideas of human intelligence. The editors discuss the complexities of algorithm,

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00:36:30

Soviet Blocks: The Bizarre Puzzle of How Tetris...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/05

A geopolitical and legal history of the bestselling videogame Tetris—the stunningly successful game that began in a Soviet research lab monitored by the KGB. Tetris—the game that would take the world by storm—was formally introduced to the West in 1987, at a time when Soviet technology exports were minimal and the Berlin Wall was still standing strong. Far from being a capitalist cultural product, the game had actually been designed in a Soviet computer lab tightly monitored by the KGB, at a time

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00:49:23

The Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/04

In our increasingly distrusting and polarized world, accusations of hypocrisy are everywhere. But our attempts to stamp out hypocrisy may backfire, creating what Michael Hallsworth calls The Hypocrisy Trap. In his bookThe Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize Can Improve Our Lives (MIT Press, 2026)Hallsworth shows how our relentless drive to expose inconsistency between words and deeds can actually breed more hypocrisy and cynicism that corrodes our institutions. Through engaging

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01:08:49

Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/03

Kelly Lytle Hernández joins Michael Stauch to discuss how the US immigration system has always been “racist by design.” Many Americans’ understanding of the immigration system begins with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. In Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control(Norton, 2026),Lytle Hernández expands that history by a full century, showing how the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s inspired not only America’s first immigration bans (to prevent news of a

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00:53:45

Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/02

In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing(U California Press, 2025), which examines the policing of housing in Los Angeles' northernmost suburb, Antelope Valley. Kurwa traces the suburbs' relationship with Los Angeles from post WWII to the early 2000s and 2010s, when the region saw increased Black migration as result of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program for

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00:48:01

The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/10/01

Six great Asian river systems have their origins in the Tibetan glacial region: the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Red and the Yangtse ('BISMRY'). Together they comprise the largest concentration of fresh water on the planet outside of the polar regions, and they support one third of humanity. In the age of imperialism, Western colonial powers dreamed of harnessing the economic potential of these great rivers, as if an ‘empire of men’ challenged a much older ‘empire of

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00:52:42

Strong State, Weak Links: Eugenics and the Southern...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/30

In the early twentieth century, most US states established eugenics programs to improve the human race through selective breeding. North Carolina ran one of the nation's most aggressive programs; between 1927 and 1977, at least 5,700 people were sterilized and thousands more were committed to institutions. While sterilizations in the 1950s and 1960s disproportionately targeted Black women receiving public assistance, the program's early focus was on poor white women. These policies were framed as

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01:00:37

Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey's...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/29

The Kurdish-populated Wan/Van Province is a major smuggling hub between Turkey and Iran. Kurdish smugglers cross this 180-mile-long land border, transporting everyday consumer goods—fuel, tobacco, sugar, and tea—as well as more illicit goods, and the province supports the financial, technical, and labor capacities that sustain these smuggling economies. As the Turkish state has enacted increasingly punitive anti-smuggling laws, smuggling has also become a site of contentious politics. Smuggling Law:

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00:58:42

The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/28

A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Game and much of reality TV are cultural reflections of a society of relentless, lonely competition, where each of us must become a player: a savvy risk-taker, a miniature corporation of one. But in a

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00:50:33

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/27

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt(SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of

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00:35:04

Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/26

Climate action is at an impasse. Its political opponents are stronger than ever, its advocates powerless. Almost every major government and corporation expresses their commitment to tackling climate change, yet decades of discussion, governance, and action have failed to stop carbon emissions advancing to record annual levels. How has so little been achieved for so long on such an urgent issue? In Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse(LSE Press, 2026), Laurie Parsons

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00:56:32

Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/25

Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it. Euben

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00:33:56

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/24

In Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America's Favorite Breakfast Food (U California Press, 2026), world-renowned food politics expert Marion Nestle joins forces with former cereal executive Lisa Sutherland to examine what cereal boxes reveal about American culture and food politics. If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely

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01:00:32

Tess Chakkalakal, "A Matter of Complexion: The Life...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/23

In A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt(St. Martin's Press, 2025), Tess Chakkalakal gives readers the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered “mixed race.” He spent his early life in North Carolina after the Civil War. Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored

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00:47:59

Ehsan Dehghan, "The Discursive-Digital Link:...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/22

We are in a state of crisis. Democracy is under threat, authoritarian politics are on the rise, and digital media—once heralded as emancipatory technologies—are increasingly implicated in democratic erosion. The Discursive-Digital Link offers a critical framework for understanding the entangled relationships between discourse, digital media, and the hidden dynamics behind antagonism and polarisation.The Discursive-Digital Link: Antagonism and Polarisation in Digital Spaces (Routledge,

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01:12:11

Eileen Luhr, "Golden States: How California Religion...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/21

Since the beginning of European colonization, the sun-drenched land of California has always attracted dreamers and schemers. Whether it was Spanish missionaries, Russian fur traders, or American argonauts, the myth - or perhaps brand - of California has long been a place here one's wildest dreams can come true. Starting in the late nineteenth century and accelerating in the twentieth, that myth also attracted a wide array of starry eyed spiritualists. In Golden States: How California Religion Went

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00:52:40

Pablo F. Gomez, "Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/20

In my conversation with Professor Pablo F. Gómez about his new book,Bloody Numbers: The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2026.Our conversation explored the unsettling relationship betweenslavery, the body, measurement, and knowledge. What does it mean to measure a human body within a system that has already reduced that person to a commodity? And what happens when numbers that appear neutral become entangled with

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01:08:46

Pushpesh Kumar et al. eds., "Sociology of Gender in...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/19

Sociology of Gender in India brings together feminist and queer scholarship to chart the changing landscape of gender debates in Indian sociology. Spanning over five decades of disciplinary evolution, this volume interrogates how gender, caste, sexuality, class, and digitalisation intersect in shaping contemporary social life. With chapters by a new generation of scholars, it critically engages with foundational debates in kinship, marriage, labour, media, nationalism, and pedagogy, while

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00:38:33

Jerome Sauvage, "Witness to North Korea: Three Years...

NBN Book of the Day ·

2026/09/18

Jerome Sauvage served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative in North Korea from 2009 to 2013.In this capacity, he was the most senior UN official in North Korea during one of the most eventful political periods on the Korean peninsula in recent memory. Amidst the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, and death of Kim Jong-il, Sauvage had to resurrect and strengthen UNDP’s—and the UN overall’s—presence in

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