New Books in Journalism
392 episodes - English - Latest episode: 27 days ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsInterview with Scholars of Journalism about their New Books
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Episodes
Elizabeth Becker, "You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War" (PublicAffairs, 2021)
March 10, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourWho were your heroes during your formative years? As a child of the 1970s, many of mine were journalists, especially those reporting on war and revolution in Southeast Asia and Latin America. I wanted to be Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously, James Woods in Salvador, or even Nick Nolte in Under Fire. It was all so exciting and glamorous, but all of these role models were men. As a teenager I idealized that romantic image of the hard drinking, rugged, tough guy journalist. When I rea...
Annika Smethurst, "On Secrets" (Hachette, 2020)
March 10, 2021 04:00 - 46 minutesOn June 4, Federal Police raided the home of Walkley award-winning journalist Annika Smethurst, changing her life forever. The police claimed they were investigating the publication of classified information, her employer called it a 'dangerous act of intimidation'. Annika believes she was simply doing her job. Ms Smethurst became the accidental poster woman for press freedom. Politicians even debated the merits of police searching through her underwear drawer. On Secrets (Hachette, 2020) con...
Seema Yasmin, "Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
February 22, 2021 09:00 - 26 minutesCan your zip code predict when you will die? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e-cigarettes while other doctors recommend you stay away from them? Health information―and misinformation―is all around us, and it can be hard to separate the two. A long history of unethical medical experiments and medical mistakes, along with a host of celebrities spewing anti-science beliefs, has left many wary of science and the scientists wh...
Meenakshi Gigi Durham, "MeToo: How Rape Culture in the Media Impacts Us All" (Polity, 2021)
February 15, 2021 09:00 - 55 minutesWe are joined today by Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in the writers’ heaven that is Iowa City, Iowa. She also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Gender, Women’s Studies, and Sexuality Studies at Iowa. She is here today to talk to us about her upcoming book: Me Too: The Impact of Rape Culture in the Media (Polity Press, 2021). Professor Durham is the author of the quite famous The Lolita Effect: The Med...
Nathaniel Greenberg, "How Information Warfare Shaped the Arab Spring: The Politics of Narrative in Egypt and Tunisia" (Edinburgh UP, 2019)
February 12, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourOn January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with an article headlined 'Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising'. The effect of the revelation was immediate, helping set in motion an aggressive counter-narrative to the nascent story of the Arab Spring. The article featured a cluster of virulent commentators all pushing the same sto...
Ethan Lou, "Field Notes from a Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended" (Signal, 2020)
February 05, 2021 09:00 - 36 minutesWe are just over a year from when global news first reported a new type of pneumonia emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan. A lockdown of Wuhan on January 23rd, 2020, was the first indication that these stories were more serious than originally thought. All of us know what happened next: COVID-19 spread from China to other countries in Asia, then to Europe, then to North America, then worldwide. To slow the spread, countries frantically imposed travel restrictions on those coming from places ...
Gennady Estraikh, "Transatlantic Russian Jewishness: Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century" (ASP, 2020)
February 05, 2021 05:00 - 1 hourIn the early decades of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Yiddish speaking immigrants actively participated in the American Socialist and labor movement. They formed the milieu of the hugely successful daily Forverts (Forward), established in New York in April 1897. In Transatlantic Russian Jewishness: Ideological Voyages of the Yiddish Daily Forverts in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (Academic Studies Press, 2020), Gennady Estraikh describes how the Forverts’ editorial co...
Vanessa Freije, "Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico" (Duke UP, 2020)
February 01, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke University Press, 2020), Vanessa Freije develops a new rich thesis about the role of the press in Mexican civil society. In this well researched monograph, Freije shows how journalists played a key role in producing scandalous spectacles that brought an otherwise authoritarian PRI to account. Simultaneously, each chapter explores the limitations and drawbacks of Mexican muckraking as bribery, violence, ...
Matthew Gavin Frank, "Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa" (Liveright, 2021)
January 28, 2021 09:00 - 57 minutesFor nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed “overmined” and abandoned, American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling?particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their fee...
Brian Deer, "The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield's War on Vaccines" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
January 25, 2021 09:00 - 54 minutesA reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hospital claim a link between autism and a vaccine given to millions of children: MMR. Young parents are terrified. Immunization rates slump. And as a worldwide ‘anti-vax’ movement kicks off, old diseases return to sicken and kill. But a veteran reporter isn’t so sure, and sets out on an epic investigation. Battling establishment cover-ups, smear ca...
Thomas Doherty, "Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century" (Columbia UP, 2020)
January 11, 2021 09:00 - 1 hourIn Little Lindy Is Kidnapped: How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century (Columbia University Press, 2020), Thomas Doherty offers a lively and comprehensive cultural history of the media coverage of the abduction and its aftermath. Beginning with Lindbergh’s ascent to fame and proceeding through the trial and execution of the accused kidnapper, Doherty traces how newspapers, radio, and newsreels reported on what was dubbed the “crime of the century.” He casts the affair as a transformativ...
Kim T. Gallon, "Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press" (U Illinois Press, 2020)
December 22, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourIn Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (University of Illinois Press, 2020), Dr. Kim Gallon examines how Black newspaper editors and journalists created and fostered Black sexual publics during the 1920s and 1930s. She demonstrates that editors strategically elected to publish stories about marital scandals, divorces, homosexuality, and gender non-conformity, imagining that this coverage was a source of pleasure and debate for Black readers. Gall...
Sharon Marcus, "The Drama of Celebrity" (Princeton UP, 2020)
December 17, 2020 09:00 - 51 minutesSharon Marcus’s new book, The Drama of Celebrity (Princeton UP, 2020), sets out to help us understand celebrity culture and how it has shifted and evolved since its contemporary inception in the early 1800s. Marcus highlights the celebrity concept throughout western history, indicating some of the same dynamics at work in classical Greece that we see in our current popular culture landscape. This culture has three components that are generally all present in some form: the celebrities themsel...
Gemma Milne, "Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It" (Robinson, 2021)
December 10, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourBombastic headlines about science and technology are nothing new. To cut through the constant stream of information and misinformation on social media, or grab the attention of investors, or convince governments to take notice, strident headlines or bold claims seem necessary to give complex, nuanced information some wow factor. But hype has a dark side, too. It can mislead. It can distract. It can blinker us from seeing what is actually going on. From AI, quantum computing and brain implants...
Scholarly Communications: A Discussion with Elisa De Ranieri, Editor-in-Chief of "Nature Communications"
December 07, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Elisa De Ranieri, Editor-in-Chief of Nature Communications. We talk about knowing the research you have done, but communicating the message you want said. Interviewer: "When a submission lands on your desk, or better said, you call it up on your screen, what are you pleased to see, what makes your work easier?" Elisa De Ranieri: "Yeah, well, I guess what makes the job easier for an editor is to receive a paper that is well-written and well-constructed and where the...
Harvey Araton, "Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship" (Penguin, 2020)
November 27, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutesHarvey Araton’s new book Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship (Penguin, 2020), reads like a mix between Tuesdays with Morrie and a sequel to his book When the Garden was Eden (which chronicled the New York Knicks’ early-70s title teams). It’s a book about friendship, aging and of course, basketball. Harvey Araton is one of New York's--and the nation's--best-known sports journalists, having covered thousands of Knicks games over the course of a long and distinguished career. But the ...
Social Media, Grassroots Activism and Disinformation in Southeast Asia: A Discussion with Dr Aim Sinpeng and Dr Ross Tapsell
November 19, 2020 09:00 - 20 minutesSocial media has become a crucial avenue for political discourse in Southeast Asia, given its potential as a “liberation technology” in both democratising and authoritarian states. Yet the growing decline in internet freedom and increasingly repressive and manipulative use of social media tools by governments means that social media is now an essential platform for control. “Disinformation” and “fake news” production is growing rapidly, and national governments are creating laws which attempt...
Vanessa Diaz, "Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood" (Duke UP, 2020)
November 18, 2020 05:00 - 50 minutesWhile Hollywood’s images present a veneer of fantasy for some, the work to create such images is far from escapism. In Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke University Press, 2020), anthropologist Vanessa Díaz examines the raced and gendered hierarchies and inequalities that are imbricated within the work of producing celebrity in Los Angeles, CA. Díaz’s ethnography follows reporters and paparazzi to examine their everyday practices of work and labor...
Chas Smith, "Cocaine and Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair" (Rare Bird, 2018)
November 06, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourSurfers are the ultimate bad boys, living the counter-culture life of decadence and hedonism as they travel the world in search of the perfect wave, partying hard along the way. So, it’s not surprising that these social misfits and dropouts created a sub-culture tied to drugs. While most might associate surfing Jeff Spicoli with smoking marijuana in Fast Times at Ridgemont High or hippies dropping acid in late 1960s Hawai’i, Chas Smith argues that cocaine and surfing are much more intertwined...
Michael Stamm, "Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018)
October 29, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourMichael Stamm’s book Dead Tree Media: Manufacturing the Newspaper in Twentieth-Century North America (Johns Hopkins UP, 2018) begins with the simple but thought-provoking premise that, not too long ago, newspapers were almost exclusively physical objects made out of paper. This meant that producing a newspaper implied industrial production, mills, and a distribution system that could deliver daily-produced issues to individual consumers. But most of all, it meant trees. Lots and lots of trees...
Victor Pickard, "Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society" (Oxford UP, 2020)
October 28, 2020 08:00 - 51 minutes"Few freedoms in the United States are as cherished as freedom of the press." So begins Chapter One of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society (Oxford University Press, 2020). The book by Victor Pickard, Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School for Communication makes it clear, however, that mainstream American news media are not really free at all, but have been pressed into service over more than a century to generate profits for ...
Jerry Gershenhorn, "Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle" (UNC Press, 2018)
October 07, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesLouis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) by Jerry Gershenhorn is a history of the struggle for Black equality in North Carolina from 1927 to 1971 as told through the life and activism of Black newspaperman Louis Austin. Austin, as editor of the Carolina Times, was involved in nearly every facet of the long Black freedom struggle in North Carolina. He was an outspoken editor and a staunch social justice advocate w...
Scholarly Communications: An Interview with Helen Pearson of 'Nature'
September 29, 2020 08:00 - 48 minutesNature is the premier weekly journal of science, the journal where specialists go to read and publish primary research in their fields. But Nature is also a science magazine, a combination unusual in journal publishing because in an issue of Nature, research stands side by side with editorials, news and feature reporting, and opinion articles. In fact, over two-thirds of the pieces Nature publishes are journalism and opinion content. This is the remit of Helen Pearson. Helen Pearson is Chief ...
Gregory A. Daddis, "Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
September 25, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesIn his compelling evaluation of Cold War popular culture, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (Cambridge UP, 2020), Gregory Daddis explores how men's adventure magazines helped shape the attitudes of young, working-class Americans, the same men who fought and served in the long and bitter war in Vietnam. The 'macho pulps' - boasting titles like Man's Conquest, Battle Cry, and Adventure Life - portrayed men courageously defeating their enemies in battle, while wo...
Teresa A. Goddu, "Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
September 16, 2020 08:00 - 59 minutesSelling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America (University of Pennsylvania Press) is a richly illustrated history of the American Anti-Slavery Society and its print, material, and visual artifacts. Beginning with its establishment in the early 1830s, the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) recognized the need to reach and consolidate a diverse and increasingly segmented audience. To do so, it produced a wide array of print, material, and visual media: almanacs and slave ...
Joseph Clark, "News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
September 15, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhen weekly newsreels launched in the early twentieth century, they offered the U.S. public the first weekly record of events that symbolized “indisputable evidence” of the news. In News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle (University of Minnesota Press), Joseph Clark examines the history of the newsreel and how it changed the way Americans saw the world. He combines an examination of the newsreel’s methods of production, distribution, and reception with an analysis of it...
Jonathan Haber, "Critical Thinking" (The MIT Press, 2020)
September 15, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn this episode, I speak with fellow New Books in Education host, Jonathan Haber, about his book, Critical Thinking (The MIT Press, 2020). This book explains the widely-discussed but often ill-defined concept of critical thinking, including its history and role in a democratic society. We discuss the important role critical thinking plays in making decisions and communicating our ideas to others as well as the most effective ways teachers can help their students become critical thinkers. Habe...
Angèle Christin, "Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms" (Princeton UP, 2020)
September 14, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesHow are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle Christin, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, explores the impact of metrics and analytics on the newsrooms of New York and Paris. Using an ethnography of two organisations, the book demonstrates the complexity, ambivalence, and difference in the use of metrics to make editorial and journalistic judgem...
Meg Heckman, "Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party" (Potomac Books, 2020)
September 11, 2020 08:00 - 56 minutesDespite her nearly two decades as the publisher of the largest newspaper in a politically pivotal state, the role of Nackey Scripps Loeb in American political and media history has been unjustly forgotten. In Political Godmother: Nackey Scripps Loeb and the Newspaper That Shook the Republican Party (Potomac Books, 2020), Meg Heckman describes the ways in which she shaped both journalism in New Hampshire and presidential politics in America. An heiress to the Scripps publishing empire, Nackey ...
Orit Kamir, "Betraying Dignity" (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2019)
August 07, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWhat do medieval knights, suicide bombers and "victimhood culture" have in common? Betraying Dignity: The Toxic Seduction of Social Media, Shaming, and Radicalization (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) argues that in the second decade of the twenty-first century, individuals, political parties and nations around the world are abandoning the dignity-based culture we established in the aftermath of two world wars, less than a century ago. Disappointed or intimidated, many turn their backs o...
Joshua Nall, "News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
August 06, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourIn 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, an...
Benjamin T. Smith, "The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street" (UNC Press, 2018)
July 27, 2020 08:00 - 51 minutesMexico today is one of the most dangerous places in the world to report the news, and Mexicans have taken to the street to defend freedom of expression. As Benjamin T. Smith demonstrates in his history of the press and civil society, The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940-1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) the cycle of violent repression and protest over journalism is nothing new. He traces it back to the growth in newspaper ...
Katherine Stewart, "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
July 01, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourFor too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging...
James M. Lundberg, "Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
June 30, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutesDuring his nearly four decades as a newspaper editor and politician, Horace Greeley embraced a range of controversial causes. In his book Horace Greeley: Print, Politics, and the Failure of American Nationhood (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019), James M. Lundberg finds within his seemingly contradictory positions a consistent belief in the power of print to forge American nationalism. This Lundberg traces to his upbringing in a Protestant American culture which valued greatly the power of reading. Upon...
Leticia Bode et al., "Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign" (Brookings, 2020)
June 19, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourWords That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign (Brookings Institution Press, 2020) comes out of a broader collaboration between social scientists at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, Gallup, Inc. This collaboration, which is on-going, has a number of foci, and this book project came out of work that combined expertise from political scientists, computer scientists, and data experts, concentrating specifically on social media, traditiona...
B. L. Johnson and M. M. Quinlan, "You’re Doing it Wrong! Mothering, Media and Medical Expertise" (Rutgers UP, 2019)
June 19, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourNew mothers face a barrage of confounding decisions during the life-cycle of early motherhood which includes... Should they change their diet or mindset to conceive? Exercise while pregnant? Should they opt for a home birth or head for a hospital? Whatever they “choose,” they will be sure to find plenty of medical expertise from health practitioners to social media “influencers” telling them that they’re making a series of mistakes. As intersectional feminists with two small children each, Be...
Robert Samet, "Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela" (U Chicago Press, 2019)
June 19, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesCaracas, the capital of Venezuela, has been ranked as one of the most violent cities in the world. In Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Robert Samet undertakes ethnography with crime journalists on their reporting practices to offer a compelling argument about the relationship between populist politics and the news. Samet participates with and observes a group of crime reporters as they traverse the city, investigating crimes, recording intervi...
Donald A. Barclay, "Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018)
June 05, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourAre you overwhelmed at the amount, contradictions, and craziness of all the information coming at you in this age of social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles? Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) will show you how to identify deceptive information as well as how to seek out the most trustworthy information in order to inform decision making in your personal, academic, professional, and civic lives. Learn how to identify the alarm bells that signal untru...
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020)
June 02, 2020 08:00 - 2 hoursBrian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, and co-founder and chair of the World Science Festival. He is well known for his TV mini-series about string theory and the nature of reality, including the Elegant Universe, which tied in with his best-selling 2000 book of the same name. In this episode, we talk about his latest popular book Until t...
Santiago Zabala, "Being at Large: Freedom in the Ago of Alternative Facts" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
May 25, 2020 08:00 - 57 minutesIn recent years, questions around the nature of truth and facts have reentered public debate, often in discussions around journalistic bias, and whether politically neutral reporting is possible, or even desirable. Many pundits have tried to place blame for the increasingly slippery and fickle nature of truth in reporting on the ideas developed in much 20th-century philosophy, particularly postmodern theory. Santiago Zabala, however, argues that this is to mistake a diagnosis with the cond...
Cailin O’Connor, "The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread" (Yale UP, 2018)
May 20, 2020 08:00 - 42 minutesWhy should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? In The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread (Yale University Press, 2018), Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true belief...
Alexander Zevin, "Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist" (Verso, 2019)
May 06, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourThe Economist is a curious publication. It always takes a point of view (as opposed to the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print approach). It maintains a uniform voice (editors and writers are typically handpicked from the same elite British universities, and rarely are there author bylines). And it has lasted a long time, originating back in London’s free-trade debates of the 1840s and continuing to be one of the most widely read magazines in the world. The Economist was a guiding hand in debate...
Mallika Kaur, "Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
May 05, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourPunjab was the arena of one of the first major armed conflicts of post-colonial India. During its deadliest decade, as many as 250,000 people were killed. This book makes an urgent intervention in the history of the conflict, which to date has been characterized by a fixation on sensational violence—or ignored altogether. In her book Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Mallika Kaur unearths the stories of three people ...
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019)
April 28, 2020 08:00 - 59 minutesSlavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary res...
Christopher D. Bader, "Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America" (NYU Press, 2020)
April 22, 2020 08:00 - 54 minutesFrom moral panics about immigration and gun control to anxiety about terrorism and natural disasters, Americans live in a culture of fear. While fear is typically discussed in emotional or poetic terms—as the opposite of courage, or as an obstacle to be overcome—it nevertheless has very real consequences in everyday life. Persistent fear negatively effects individuals’ decision-making abilities and causes anxiety, depression, and poor physical health. Further, fear harms communities and socie...
Travis Lupick, "Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City’s Struggle with Addiction" (Arsenal, 2108)
April 08, 2020 08:00 - 53 minutesNorth America is in the grips of a drug epidemic; with the introduction of fentanyl, the chances of a fatal overdose are greater than ever, prompting many to rethink the war on drugs. Public opinion has slowly begun to turn against prohibition, and policy-makers are finally beginning to look at addiction as a health issue as opposed to one for the criminal justice system. While deaths across the continent continue to climb, In Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City...
Arthur Asseraf, "Electric News in Colonial Algeria" (Oxford UP, 2019)
April 03, 2020 08:00 - 1 hourArthur Asseraf’s Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford University Press, 2019) examines the workings of the “news ecosystem” in Algeria from the 1880s to the beginning of the Second World War. The study of a society divided between a dominant (European) settler minority and an Algerian Muslim majority, the book tracks the development and impact of new information technologies—the printing press, telegraph, cinema, radio (and later television)—in Algeria from the late-nineteenth through th...
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020)
March 30, 2020 08:00 - 54 minutesParadox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt C...
Margaret E. Roberts, "Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall" (Princeton UP, 2020)
March 27, 2020 04:00 - 49 minutesWe often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’ new book Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall (Princeton University Press, 2020) reveals the nuances of censorship in the age of the internet. She identifies 3 types of censorship: fear (threatening punishment to deter the spread or access of information); friction (increasing the time or money necessary to access inf...
Ruth Palmer, "Becoming the News: How Ordinary People Respond to the Media Spotlight" (Columbia UP, 2017)
March 18, 2020 08:00 - 58 minutesIn her book, Becoming the News: How Ordinary People Respond to the Media Spotlight (Columbia University Press, 2017), Ruth Palmer argues that understanding the motivations and experiences of those who have been featured in news stories – voluntarily or not – sheds new light on the practice of journalism and the importance many continue to place on the role of the mainstream media. Palmer charts the arc of the experience of “making” the news, from the events that brought an ordinary person to ...