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18,660 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 days ago - ★★★★ - 128 ratingsInterviews with Authors about their New Books
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Episodes
Erin Mayo-Adam, "Queer Alliances: How Power Shapes Political Movement Formation" (Stanford UP, 2020)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutesQueer Alliances: How Power Shapes Political Movement Formation (Stanford UP, 2020) examines not only the policies that political movements advocate for, and those that are achieved, but the research pays particular attention to the dynamics that contribute to the movement formation itself and how this part of the story is often overlooked or obscured. Erin Mayo-Adam’s new book aims, in her research, to explore political movements in the United States, while also making a great effort to cente...
Leslie Waters, "Borders on the Move: Territorial Change and Forced Migration in the Hungarian-Slovak Borderlands, 1938-1948" (U Rochester Press, 2020)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 57 minutesThe movement of borders and people was a remarkably common experience for mid-twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europeans. Such was the case along the border between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, where territory changed hands in 1938 and again in 1945. During the intervening period and beyond, residents of the borderland were caught in a nearly continuous onslaught of ethnic cleansing - expulsion of Czech and Slovak "colonists," Jewish deportations during the Holocaust, and postwar populati...
Omer Friedlander, “Operation Tamar," The Common magazine (Spring, 2020)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 22 minutesWriter Omer Friedlander speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Operation Tamar,” which appears in Issue 19 of The Common magazine. “Operation Tamar” is set in Israel, where Friedlander grew up. In this conversation, Friedlander talks about the setting and inspiration for this story and others, and the editing and revision that went into “Operation Tamar” before publication. He also discusses his current projects, a novel and a short story collection recently sold to Random H...
Narrating Africa in South Asia
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourNarrating Africa in South Asia (Special Journal Issue: South Asian History and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2020) explores the multifaceted and longue durée history of the African diaspora in South Asia. The themes of the articles cover many grounds, such as race, religion, social and intellectual history, space and place, social networks and globality, memory studies, and identity politics, among others. Narrating Africa in South Asia situates the African diaspora in the South Asian subconti...
Siri Erika Gullestad and Bjørn Killingmo, "The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalytic Therapy: Listening for the Subtext" (Routledge, 2019)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 56 minutes“She is seated in her chair, quietly anticipative. She is in no hurry. There is nothing that has to be achieved. She does not charge the situation with her temper. On the contrary, she is turned towards the other, listening attentively – present in the contact, though with no traces of intimacy or fervency. She is fairly softly spoken, yet clear and factual. A benevolent, lightly questioning tone characterizes her voice. No gestures, no jargon, no implicit jokiness, no sideward glances, no hi...
The Self-Care Stuff: Considering Whether to Stay or Drop Out
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 53 minutesWelcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: navigating academia as a STEM student, gettin...
Sean Anthony, "Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam" (U California Press, 2020)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourContemporary historians have searched for the historical Muhammad along many paths. In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam (University of California Press, 2020), Sean Anthony, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, recommends employing non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem in order to view a fuller landscape of Late Antiquity. Anthony revisits the earliest Arabic materials, including the Qur’an, epigraphic and archeologi...
Sophia Chang, "The Baddest Bitch in the Room" (Catapult, 2020)
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 41 minutesEnter the Wu-Tang. Return to the 36 Chambers. People listening to these albums by the Wu-Tang Clan and its members likely never knew about Sophia Chang: a Korean-Canadian woman who worked with members like RZA, ODB and Method Man. Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest called Sophia Chang “an integral part of the golden era of hip-hop.” The Baddest Bitch in the Room (Catapult, 2020) charts Sophia Chang’s life, from her childhood in Vancouver, through time in New York’s hip-hop scene and travels betwee...
Ryan T. Anderson, "What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense" (Encounter Books, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 50 minutesHistorically, marriage was understood to be a conjugal relationship; that is to say, a bond uniting a man and a woman as husband and wife in a partnership shaped by its special aptness for conceiving and rearing children. Thus, its norms included sexual complementarity, exclusivity, fidelity, and a pledge of permanence. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, held that states could no longer define marriage as a distinctively male-female bond. The...
Michiel Baas, "Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility & the New Middle Class" (Context, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 58 minutesThe gyms of urban ‘new India’ are intriguing spaces. While they cater largely to well-off clients, these shiny, modern institutions are also vehicles of upward mobility for the trainers and specialists who work there. As they learn English, ‘upgrade’ their dressing style and try to develop a deeper understanding of the lives of their upmarket customers., they break with an older kind of masculinity represented by the pehlwans in their akharas. Equally, the gym aspires to be a safe space for w...
Anna Hájková, "The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt" (Oxford UP, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 56 minutesAnna Hájková's new book The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt (Oxford UP, 2020) is the first in-depth analytical history of a prisoner society during the Holocaust. Terezín (Theresienstadt in German) was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. Rather than depict the world of the prisoners as an atomized state of exception, it argues that the prisoner soc...
Andrea Moudarres, "The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso" (U Virginia Press, 2019)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 59 minutesIn The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso (University of Delaware Press, 2019), Andrea Moudarres examines influential works from the literary canon of the Italian Renaissance, arguing that hostility consistently arises from within political or religious entities. In Dante's Divine Comedy, Luigi Pulci's Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, enmity is portrayed as internal, taking the form of tyranny, betr...
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 59 minutesThe 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new pan-Asian story. At the very same time, as Kelly Hammond shows in China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II (UNC Press, 2020), members of this longstanding community of Sino-Muslims were themselves engaged in numerous complex debates over culture and identity, and their place ...
Bethany Maile, "Anything Will Be Easy After This: A Western Identity Crisis" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 43 minutesThere is something quintessentially American about the idea of the west. Though the time of western expansion has long since passed, stories about cowboys on horses and pioneers panning for gold resonate with us to this day, living on in our books, our movies, and our in cultural imaginations. Through these stories, the west has come to represent values like stoicism, self-reliance, and rugged individualism. For many who call it home, the west also represents a heritage, a tradition, and a wa...
Myroslav Shkandrij, "Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory" (Academic Studies Press, 2019)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 48 minutesMyroslav Shkandrij’s Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory (Academic Studies Press, 2019) offers an insight into the development of the Ukrainian avant-garde, a topic which still remains unjustifiably understudied. The book is an important contribution to the reevaluation of the artistic legacies of the world-renowned artists: Kazimir Malevich, David Burliuk, Mykhailo Boichuk, Vadym Meller, Ivan Kavaleridze, and Dziga Vertov. As the title of the book prompts, the focus is ma...
Mark James Porter, "Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking" (Oxford UP, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 45 minutesMark Porter (@mrmarkporter) explores the relationship between music, sound, space, and spirit in his new book Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking (Oxford University Press, 2020). Using the analytical tools of resonance to describe the sounding and re-sounding of sonic production in different spaces, Porter uses the disciplines of musicology and ethnography to describe the worlds of relationships in an assortment of Christian musical traditions. How do the varieties of musicking from...
Howard Gardner, "A Synthesizing Mind: A Memoir from the Creator of Multiple Intelligences Theory" (MIT Press, 2021)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 32 minutesThe synthesizing mind is one that identifies a program or asks a question, pulls together information from across disciplines or creates new data through experimentation, and integrates everything into a novel solution or answer. Some of history’s most revolutionary thinkers – like Aristotle or Darwin – were synthesizers. But what do synthesizing minds actually do? Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Senior Directo...
K. A. Young and M. Schwartz, "Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It" (Verso, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 2 hoursIt is often assumed that American politics is dominated by financial elites and the 1%, who use their massive wealth to gain power and influence, pushing for legislation that benefits them at the expense of everyone else. The actual mechanics of how this works, however, are often difficult to see and understand, obscured by distortion via the media, politicians, and the stories we often tell ourselves about how political change happens. These narratives often tell us about noble figures who c...
Mark Nowak, "Social Poetics" (Coffee House Press, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 53 minutesMark Nowak's Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020) is a history of the poetry workshop "from below and to the left." Inspired by previous workers' poetry workshops led by writers like June Jordan and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Nowak's book traces the history of worker poetry both in the US and abroad. It also details Nowak's own involvement with workers' poetry workshops held with autoworkers facing layoffs, farm workers in Hudson Valley, and metal workers in South Africa. Nowak shows that poetry...
Mark Gerald, "In the Shadow of Freud's Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Offices" (Routledge, 2020)
December 30, 2020 09:00 - 44 minutesPsychotherapy offices are typically thought of as existing in the background of treatment, but they are brought to the foreground in Mark Gerald’s new book In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in Their Office (Routledge, 2020). In this beautifully written book, illustrated with pictures of psychoanalysts in their offices from around the world, psychoanalyst and photographer Mark Gerald explores the stories offices tell about their holders and their role in the transform...
Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, "Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power, and Labor in Contemporary Yucatan" (U California Press, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourThe name Cancún brings to mind tourism, resorts, beaches, sun, and fun. In her book, Stuck With Tourism: Space, Power, and Labor in Contemporary Yucatan (University of California Press, 2020), Matilde Córdoba Azcárate reveals the processes of labor, extraction, and reorganization that make places such as Cancún a tourism site. Dr. Azcárate examines four tourist sites across the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula, including resorts in Cancún and Temozón, a nature preserve in Celestún, and guayabera shi...
Elizabeth Catte, "Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia" (Belt, 2021)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourBetween 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia (Belt, 2021), a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia's twentieth-century eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, with clarity and ferocity....
Elizabeth McCulloch, "Dreaming the Marsh" (Twisted Road, 2019)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 32 minutesElizabeth McCulloch was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lived in New England, the Midwest, Canada, and the South, before putting down roots in Gainesville, Florida, almost forty years ago. Previously a lawyer, then a teacher, she has had children of various stripes: one born, two foster, one step, and the granddaughter she is now raising with her husband. Elizabeth has always loved to read and always wanted to write. She began seriously pursuing her dream over 30 years ago, with pauses i...
Kyle Riismandel, "Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 42 minutesOne of the lures that drew Americans to the suburbs in the years after World War II was the promise of a secure life. By the mid-1970s, however, it seemed that this security was under threat from a variety of sources. In Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Kyle Riismandel examines the anxiety felt by American suburbanites during those decades, and what their responses reveal about the politics and society of that era...
Charles R. Acland, "American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder" (Duke UP, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourBen-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017): the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder (Duke University Press, 2020), Charles R. Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in th...
Marjoleine Kars, "Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast" (New Press, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 44 minutesIn Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (New Press, 2020), historian Marjoleine Kars tells the story of a massive eighteenth-century slave rebellion in the Dutch colony of Berbice (in present-day Guyana). Drawing on some nine hundred pages of interrogation transcripts and letters that provide rare first person accounts from enslaved African-born rebels, Kars chronicles how nearly 5,000 of the total enslaved population held onto Berbice for over a year holdin...
John Wei, "Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 33 minutesJohn Wei’s book Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) studies queer cultures and social practices in China and Sinophone Asia. Young queer people in Asia struggle under the dual pressures of compulsory familism and compulsory development, that is, to marry and continue the family line and to participate successfully in the neoliberal development of Asia. Compulsory development often necessitates migration for education...
J. A. Gosetti-Ferencei, "On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life" (Oxford UP, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 47 minutesWhile existentialism has long been associated with Parisian Left Bank philosophers sipping cocktails in smoke-filled cafés, or with a brooding, angst-filled outlook on life, Gosetti-Ferencei shows how vital and heterogeneous the movement really was. In On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life (Oxford UP, 2020), Gosetti-Ferencei offers a new vision of existentialism. As she lucidly demonstrates, existentialism is a rich and diverse philosophy that encourages meaningful engagem...
Monika Black, "A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post–WWII Germany" (Metropolitan, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 58 minutesIn the aftermath of World War II, a succession of mass supernatural events swept through a war-torn Germany. As millions were afflicted by a host of seemingly incurable maladies (including blindness and paralysis), waves of apocalyptic rumors crashed over the land. A messianic faith healer rose to extraordinary fame, prayer groups performed exorcisms, and enormous crowds traveled to witness apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Most strikingly, scores of people accused their neighbors of witchcraft...
Robin Mitchell, "Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourThe preface to Robin Mitchell's new book, Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (University of Georgia Press, 2020) moves me. In it, the author tells the story of her first research trip to Paris and the profound moment of her encounter with a plaster cast of Sarah Baartmann's body at the Musée de l'Homme. It is riveting, personal, and honest, the perfect entry into a book that is all of these things. Exploring the cultural production of French represent...
Samuel Zipp, "The Idealist: Wendell Willkie's Wartime Quest to Build One World" (Harvard UP, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 54 minutesDuring the 1940s, many Americans began to rethink America’s place in the world, and they did so with the help of Wendell Wilkie. Wilikie, the 1940 Republican nominee for president, businessman, and unofficial presidential envoy, made international issues easy to understand for many Americans. His particular brand of internationalism, outlined in his bestselling book One World (1943), challenged Americans to think about empire and America’s global power. He did this not with weighty philosophi...
Theodora Wildcroft, "Post-lineage Yoga: From Guru to #metoo" (Equinox Publishing, 2020)
December 29, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourTheodora Wildcroft's Post-lineage Yoga: From Guru to #metoo (Equinox Publishing, 2020) presents a ground-breaking model for scholars to understand the contemporary teaching and practice of yoga, one where peer networks are more relevant than either brand loyalty or lineage affiliation. Previous research has considered the history and science of yoga, but rarely the ways in which it has been shared. This book aims to change that. From the very advent of group classes, yoga teachers have dictat...
Simon J. Gilhooley, "The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourThe Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution: Slavery and the Spirit of the American Founding (Cambridge University Press, 2020) argues that conflicts over slavery and abolition in the early American Republic generated a mode of constitutional interpretation that remains powerful today: the belief that the historical spirit of founding holds authority over the current moment. Simon J. Gilhooley traces how debates around the existence of slavery in the District of Columbia gave rise to th...
Queer Voices of the South: Year in Review
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourIn this final episode of 2020, New Books Network hosts and fellow authors take a look back at the evolution of their podcast Queer Voices of the South, recount their conversations with authors during the first six episodes, offer listeners a taste of what to expect in 2021, answer listener questions, and share their resolutions for a new year. About the Co-Hosts: Each of the books by the three co-hosts was published by the University Press of Mississippi. John Marszalek is clinical faculty o...
Trevor C. Pederson, "Psychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film: Reading the Symptom" (Routledge, 2018)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourPsychoanalysis and Hidden Narrative in Film: Reading the Symptom (Routledge, 2018) proposes a way of constructing hidden psychological narratives of popular film and novels. Instead of offering interpretations of classic films, Trevor C. Pederson recognizes that the psychoanalytic tradition began with making sense of the seemingly inconsequential. Here he turns his attention to popular films like Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys (1987). While masterworks like Psycho (1960) are not the object o...
Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 34 minutesWhen we read the Declaration of Independence, what tends to jump off the page are the lofty propositions concerning natural rights. Yet over a third of the brief document is taken up with a set of charges aimed at George III, many of them relating to war - whether the maintenance of standing armies, the lack of civilian control over the military, or the forced quartering of troops who enjoyed judicial immunity. The King, it blared, ‘has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns ...
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, "Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living" (U Notre Dame Press, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourElisabeth Lasch-Quinn's new book Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Art of Living (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) provides a cultural critique that connects the most pressing needs of the individual in modern society to the insights of the ancient approach to philosophy as a way of life. The wisdom of the ancients offers a way to cultivate an inner life as an alternative to therapeutic culture of self-help and consumerism. Beginning with how Gnosticism has ...
Adam Fabry, "The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism" (Palgrave, 2019)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 57 minutesAdam Fabry's book The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2019) explores the political economy of Hungary from the mid-1970s to the present. Widely considered a 'poster boy' of neoliberal transformation in post-communist Eastern Europe until the mid-2000s, Hungary has in recent years developed into a model 'illiberal' regime. Constitutional checks-and-balances are non-functioning; the independent media, trade unions, and civil society ...
Alyson K. Spurgas, "Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity Into the Twenty-First Century" (Ohio State UP, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourIn Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century, (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), Alyson K. Spurgas, Ph.D. examines the “new science of female sexuality” from a critical, sociological perspective, considering how today’s feminist-identified sex researchers study and manage women with low desire. Diagnosing Desire investigates experimental sex research that measures the disconnect between subjective and genital female arousal, contemporary psychiatric dia...
J. Daniel Elam, "World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics" (Fordham UP, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourWorld Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham University Press, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocates collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought c...
Jean Casimir. "The Haitians: A Decolonial History" (UNC Press, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourIn The Haitians: A Decolonial History (UNC Press, 2020), leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century. Rather, it begins with a reconstruction of how individuals from Africa, in the midst of the golden age of imperialism, created a sovereign society based on political imagination and a radical rejection of the colonial order, persisting even through the U.S. occu...
Jenn Shapland, "My Autobiography of Carson Mccullers: A Memoir" (Tin House Books, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 47 minutesJenn Shapland's My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House Books, 2020) is a fascinating cross-genre book that combines elements of traditional biography with Shapland's own personal narrative of researching McCullers and discovering the many ways her life and McCullers' mirror each other. McCullers was a lesbian, but many of her biographers have shied away from this aspect of her life, referring to her partners as "friends" or "obsessions." Shapland's book is a bold work of historical r...
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, "War for Eternity: Inside Bannon's Far-right Circle of Global Power Brokers" (Dey Street Books, 2020)
December 28, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourAn explosive and unprecedented inside look at Steve Bannon's entourage of global powerbrokers and the hidden alliances shaping today's geopolitical upheaval. In 2015, Bloomberg News named Steve Bannon “the most dangerous political operative in America.” Since then, he has grown exponentially more powerful—and not only in the United States. In this groundbreaking and urgent account, award-winning scholar of the radical right Benjamin Teitelbaum takes readers behind-the-scenes of Bannon's globa...
Kim Stanley Robinson, "The Ministry for the Future" (Hachette, 2020)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 46 minutesThe Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020) is a sweeping novel about climate change and how people of the near future start to slow, stop and reverse it. The story opens with a devastating heat wave that kills thousands in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. From there, Kim Stanley Robinson pulls back to show us the world’s reaction, taking readers from the eponymous Ministry for the Future (which advocates for new laws and policies, like carbon quantitative easing) to scientists in Antarctica,...
Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, "After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency" (Lawfair Press, 2020)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourBob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, two attorneys who have worked, respectively, in the Barack Obama and the George W. Bush Administrations, have written a blueprint of considerations to reform and revise aspects of the Executive Branch and the presidency. After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (Lawfair Press, 2020) joins a number of recent books—among them Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes’ Unmaking the Presidency, Stephen F. Knott’s The Lost Soul of the American Presidency, Lara M. Brown’s ...
Justine Howe, "The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender" (Routledge, 2020)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 40 minutesThe Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender (Routledge, 2020), edited by Justine Howe, includes an excellent introduction to Islam and gender as well as to the volume and 31 content chapters, written by national and international, and established and emerging scholars. It encompasses a wide range of scholarship on many themes in the study of gender and Islam, including sex, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, women’s lived experiences, female authority, fertility, and queerness. It is organize...
Erez Manela, "The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism" (Oxford UP, 2019)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 51 minutesThis is a Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, in addition to the rise of China and Russia, we have put together this series on Third World Nationalism to nuance the present discourse on nationalism, note its centrality to anti-imperial, anti-colonial politics around the world, the reconfiguration of global power, and its inextricability from mainstream politics in Africa, Asia,...
Matt Christman, "The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason" (Simon & Schuster, 2019)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 1 hourLet’s face it, 2020 has been a hell of a year. We could all use a good laugh. But as historians and/or fans of history, we have to read something historically grounded, right? Well, fear not! Felix Biederman, Virgil Texas, Will Menaker, Brendan James, and Matt Christman, those rapscallions from the Chapo Trap House podcast wrote a book, The Chapo Guide to Revolution; A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason (Simon & Schuster, 2018), and it’s got a lot of history in it. I sat down with Mat...
Jonathan C. Slaght, "Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl" (FSG, 2020)
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 38 minutesThe Blakiston’s fish owl is the world’s largest living species of owl, with larger females of the species weighing as much as ten pounds. It lives in the Russian Far East and Northern Japan. It is also endangered: global populations are estimated to be around 1500 owls in total. The story of one conservationist’s efforts to save these owls is told in Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2020), the first book by Jonathan Slaght. ...
The Other Side of the Desk with a UP Editor: A Discussion with Kim Guinta
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 48 minutesWelcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear: an overview of the publishing process (from the aut...